Reception teacher told us not to read everyday

[TeaJunky]

Ok, so dd started bringing books home. She initially brought the purple level with no words then progressed onto pink quite quickly. She reads her school reading (phonics) book to me everyday and as the reading book is changed only once a week, she began to find this boring quite quickly.

I wrongly assumed that she is perhaps ready for something more challenging and I wrote this in her reading record.

Dd's reception teacher called me in at the end of the day and proceeded to show me the whole reading scheme on the trolley and explain that it only consisted of 500 words and the whole point of it was to achieve fluency blah blah (I already know all this). She said dd had been tried out on some 'harder' books and struggled with them hence she stayed on pink.
That was fine by me, so I suggested that she perhaps needed a new book more often as she read everyday. The teacher said 'really, don't read everyday because it can get boring really quickly'.
I pointed out that it actually wasn't me pushing dd to sit down and read, it was her bringing her book bag from her room and literally dragging me onto the sofa to read - she said 'honestly, don't let her do it everyday'

What ?!

The second thing that worried me about the whole conversation was the fact that the reading scheme only went up to level red, so the whole of the reading scheme was only three levels; purple (pre words), pink and red. She said that's the highest they can go in reception on the scheme.

Am I right to feel that this is a very limiting and pre-determined scheme with no room for differentiation or individual progression?

This is a highly thought of school and we are happy with everything else but the whole reading convo we had seems so bizarre.

thoughts ?

Oh, that's right there's loads of blood and guts in A Christmas Carol and Twelfth Night! I'll come to you for lessons from now on.

Actually don't answer that. You'll be telling us that you read them aged 3 and that you played Ophelia at 6...

Well done might not like their 5 year old reading about spirits of the dead in Christmas Carol and adult relationships in Twelfth Night but something tells me if its done thing you can show off about you'll be for ing your child regardless.

No, you wouldn't ask me any advice but then you wouldn't ask any teacher. The huge chip in your shoulder would get in your way.

• well some...

• forcing your child...

I think mrz has done Shakespeare and A Christmas Carol with Yr2, so not much older. I doubt she just gave them the full original texts and just left them to get on with it though. There wouldn't be many 6/7 year olds that could cope with that and very very few if any 5 year olds.

www.earlyshakespeare.com/

I wonder if there's such a thing as Educational Abuse?

If adults try to use their power/position to expose children to physical/sexual experiences which they are not ready for, we call that abusive.

It might seem like I'm trying to inflame the debate even further. But
I'm interested in this because my mother did encourage me to be very precocious. For example, getting me to read the editorials in The Guardian when I was five. Putting 'Jane Eyre' and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' in front of me when I was six. It didn't help me to fit in at school, either in terms of the work - or in terms of developing friendships with other children.

I don' think such things were important to my parents. And of course I was pleased that they were pleased with me. But I was also unhappy, without knowing why.

I read a Marcia Williams version of Christmas Carol to my Y3s last year, and have seen a (bowdlerised) version of Twelfth Night done as a school play - but tbh both will be much better when the children can fully access and empathise with the deeper themes - adult love / attraction, poverty, handicap, greed, redemption.

Both left me with the feeling of 'why bother?' There are so many other, better, age appropriate, interesting, dare I say it funny, texts for children to read at primary age. As an avid reader myself, the age I found the 'classics' most valuable was as an early teenager: faced with free rein in the adult section of the library, those classic 'anchors' (still a little bit too old for me, but never scarily 'unsuitable') were the mainstay of my reading matter. 'Teen' / 'Young Adult' books hadn't been invented, and with my mum at hand to rescue me from the grimmest of Dickens [and from Wuthering Heughts for a while] the classics filled the gap.

To make your child read / recite / recognise the words in Dickens or Shakespeare at an early primary age, tbh, just smacks of a total lack of imagination or knowledge of children's literature, and a rather bizarre focus on 'difficulty for the sake of difficulty'.

I can well believe you can use adapted versions with year 2. Have just read a picture book version of a Christmas carol with a group of year 3.

Somehow, and sadly I don't think column was referring to such texts, or indeed excerpts of texts.

Teacher..I think that the texts and authors .coloumn refers to does indeed show a lack of knowledge of modern children's literature.

I have also recently done some of the condensed Shakespeare tales illustrated by Terry Deary with my class of 9/10 year olds, alongside the Marcia Williams' illustrated versions.

They are a great early introduction to the plots,and lend themselves to extension through short sections of the original text (especially those like e.g. the Witches' Spell from Macbeth, where the sound of the words is as important for effect as their precise meaning).

Would my class be 'cleverer' or 'better educated' or 'more well read' had we read the plays in the original instead? Nope. But do they understand the plots of some of the most famous plays, and had their ears tuned to some great poetry, while still believing Shakespeare to be exciting and accessible? Yes.

I found a few kids versions of Twelfth Night, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet (orchard classics) in a charity shop but neither of my DC are interested. I think DD would love them if she gave them a go in maybe a year or so.

Those are the ones I use, and they're great. If column was reading those with her child, as well as a wide range of excellent modern and traditional authors' writing for children, that would be fine. But I fear they're not - to the detriment of her daughter's genuine understanding and love of books.

If she would discuss this less defensively and actually believe that any teacher knows what they are talking about, she could get some great suggestions for age appropriate but challenging texts and authors. It's such a shame!

They do look good and were a bargain at 10P each

The BBC animate tales a great for primary children

Well, fear away girls, fear away. Fear will do in lieu of knowledge, won't it.

I did an English degree at one of those universities, which other Mumsnet parents start support threads about. Even so I honestly don't think I understood Shakespeare properly till at least my mid-thirties. Even the comedies are about loving the wrong person, and failing to see one's own errors. The tragedies are about even more damaging obsessions and mistakes. It's only when I started gaining some insight into my own emotions and relationships, that Shakespeare made sense - as opposed to being some sort of way of demonstrating narrow intellectual 'cleverness'.

And it's very difficult to separate the drama - or plot - from the poetry. If you dilute the language, which is very very rich and complex, it isn't really Shakespeare. I am sure that gifted teachers - and visiting practitioners - can do something with KS1 and 2, to give a kind of initial taste of Shakespeare. But I am still unconvinced that giving it to children early is a good thing.

as are the Shakespeare can be fun books and yes it is about the music and patterns of the language as much as it is the story

Pride comes before a fall. It's just unfortunate it potentially involves your daughters love of learning...

Column,

I apologise - you are right, you have never listed your daughter's favourite books (not the ones that you ask her to read, or the ones she chooses because she knows that you like them - what are her favourite books to read to her toys, to her dad, to her friends when they come round? What do you find her reading in bed first thing, or late at night when she's meant to be asleep?) and so we have to 'fill in the gaps', and we are doubtless wrong.

Which authors / books does she really enjoy reading by herself?

Dr Seuss was very popular with my 2, too - and those we genuinely can recite, still some 7 or 8 years on. What else?

I think it is very possible to access great literature at different levels and yes your understanding at 30 will be very different to your understanding at 18 or 15 or 5 but does it really matter. It isn't about being "clever".

Dare I say I hate Dr Seuss almost as much as I hate Beatrix

Frau.

I think the main advantage of giving a taste of Shakespeare to children 'early' is that they never see it as 'too hard' - and also that so much Shakespearean language is still in our modern English it is fun for them to see the original. We do it as part of overall work on the late Tudors, and it gives a glimpse of the language and culture of that time.

It's like reading a children's Nativity story and then reading Luke or Matthew or John in the Authorised version when older. Because the plot is already known and familiar, the richness of the language strikes even more strongly. Powerful language in other sections of the Bible which I know less well - say the story of Esther, or Amos - never strike me as powerfully because I have to work to understand the story as well as the language IYSWIM.