moving to next reading level

[slp123]

if a child is reading every word without sounding out and understanding the story/book (yellow level) would they be ready for blue?
just after a few opinions really. ..

Possibly, possibly not. If the school haven't covered the phonic sounds for blue, then child will not cope with blue!

the school hasn't covered the phonics sounds for yellow yet either...but she is well supported at home. They are teaching phase 3, yellow seems to have phase 5 & 6 ...tricky really as the books are pretty much ORT so not linked to phonics phases.

I think they should be given the chance to try it yes.

My daughter's school haven't yet covered the phonic sounds but that doesn't mean she doesn't know them and is happily reading them in words.

As a parent I would just make sure I am making comments like 'read fluently, read easily with good expression, comprehension' or whatever is appropriate. Then the teachers will hopefully think the same and look into moving them up.

Look at the Oxford owl website which has loads of (school) books and try her on a stage 4.

When a child can read more than 95% of the book without a problem - ie needs help with one word in 20 then the book is too easy as long as they are comprehending what they are reading. A book that is at the right level should provide a small amount of challenge - ie needing help with between one in ten and one in twenty words. Needing help with more than 1 in 10 words means the book is too hard.

thanks for all the comments. I don't want to be pushy at school but equally feel she is not being challenged or moving on...there is a bit of Christmas mania with nativity, panto and parties coming up but will maybe try putting something in reading record book.
I was wondering about guided reading...would you expect the book that is read to be the child's reading level or a different level?
thanks again

a child should move up to the next reading level when the teacher is confident that they are ready to do so. If the school is using ORT they obviously aren't matching books to teaching so that isn't the issue but only the teacher can tell you why she/he thinks your child isn't ready to move up.
The idea of being able to read 95% of the words doesn't take into account other skills the teacher will want to develop as children progress.

Ask for the hard yellow books. (Then you'll know.)

Ours they seem to move them up when they still stumble over lots of words; drives me batty. I would so rather he was very confident before moving on.

I think guided reading should be done either at the child's level, or one above.

DD does it several levels below and IMO is completely pointless

It depends what the focus of the guided reading session is. Often it's better to use an easier book if the focus is developing fluency or comprehension - retreival & inference or author intent because the child doesn't need to focus on "reading" the words.

There aren't any "hard" or "easy" yellow (or any other colour) books because the purpose of the book banding is to group books by difficulty/challenge.

DD has been doing guided reading at the same level for just under a year now, I think she is done with it! It is also getting to the point where she is re-reading (in guided reading) books that she did in reception.

But having said that she does guided reading once a week, so if this is the only thing that DD moans about then we are doing well

ours the whole yr1 class seems to do guided reading at level 3 even those reading chapter books....

I guess your school does whatever it does. We've got books which are decodable and yellow and ones which aren't decodable and yellow. Some people scream blue murder when their book has the word syphon, system, pilot or emergency in an otherwise easy book and other people don't. Or you could call them hard and easy. It doesn't much bother me what you call them, they're all rubbish anyway. Best chuck them all away and get Beatrix Potter or Michael Rosen out, job done.

So you are now privy to what books are used in guided reading sessions ...

When you've got an easy reading book then getting 95% of the words correct isn't hard as there aren't that many words! DD got 100% correct today, but am happy for her to carry on where she is as she's YR and has a milion other things to be doing as well as reading. Also she (and I) are enjoying the books she is given, which is very important.
Is your child YR? I would chill if so and focus on sharing lovely Christmas stories.

And yes, of course you can teach the sounds yourself, but this requires time, energy and competence (not supposed to be patronising but there is a degree of skill needed and better not to do it than do it wrong). I did this with DS as they were painfully slow going through the sounds in YR and he needed them.

Our school has always been v encouraging of parents suggesting when they think a child needs moving up - why not ask. Teacher this year openly said there are 30 kids in the class and I won't be able to assess them all often enough to keep up with progress. Dd has only been moved up once or twice at school initiative/ the rest ours, though I guess they'd disagree if they thought she wasn't ready. She's a very fluent reader doing extension work out of class- I'm not sure she'd be at this point if we hadn't told them when she was getting bored at her current level.Contrary to what you read on here, parents are often well able to tell when their kids are ready. Comprehension, fluency and expression - not exactly rocket science.

Simpson we had the same problem with DS, he was reading on the same level for the last 18 months of infant school as apparently there was no group to put him in (they were in small ability groups) and also due to the limitations of KS1 , he moved up 5 reading stages within 3 weeks of being in Junior school so clearly this can be an issue at some schools.

However, what it also proves is that it isn't really an issue as if they are doing ok then it shouldn't necessarily hold them back in the longer term. We gave up on school books once the TA told him to choose books he hadn't read for a while as he moaned he had read all the books, I let him read whatever he wanted and just sent the school books back unread.

I do think that children may not move up as quickly as you feel they should as once they get to blue level onwards there is a bigger criteria to meet the level so it may be worth asking about that. DSs school always read a level up for guided reading.

Op it sounds like your dc is ready to move up a level. Iirc, the sounds used in the lower levels usually appear again and again throughout the book so you can learn the sounds as they appear in the books. One book might target one or two sounds so easy to pick them up as you go regardless of whether covered at school.

well ok Mrz my daughter could be lying when she tells me that each group has the same books in different weeks and they get swapped around but I think it highly unlikely she would bother. she is more than capable of knowing they are books she read in preschool and the fact they say on them the level they are kind of gives it away a little bit.

I don't imagine your daughter is lying for a minute but I also doubt that the teacher has shared her planning with your daughter so isn't aware of what the teacher is teaching other children. The same text can be used on a variety of levels for different purposes ... hard to tell unless you are actually involved.

I never claimed that they were all studying it for the exact same purpose or in the same amount of detail, I was just making the statement that they are all using level 3 so the level of the book isn't related to their personal reading book level.

I did work in schools for many years and am from a family of teachers so whilst I may not be a qualified teacher I do know a lot more about how a classroom works than you seem to think. I think you are reading more into my statements than is actually there.

I think it's very easy to read more into what happens in classrooms when you don't know all the facts