Year 1 reading levels

[mamababa]

Just wondered if any primary teachers or others could tell me what level of reading Is expected from a y1 child? School are very reluctant to tell anyone anything it seems (but thats another story!) DS moved onto blue from yellow yesterday despite me asking for this from October (he was put on yellow in June last year) as he was finding the books quite easy by half term. I am just interested to know if he is where he should be or if he's a bit behind average so I can try to help if needs be. The teacher is hugely unhelpful

See here for info on colours/bands/ages. Bear in mind all children are different and are good at some things and not so good at others.

My DD is in yr1 and I also read with yr1 kids (but not DD's class) and there are kids on stage 11 down to stage 1. The majority seem to be around stage 6/7 however it is a very academic year and when I read with the previous yr1s (now yr2 iyswim!) at this point most of them were on stage 3 or 4.

Thanks both

If you child can read well outside the school scheme then supply the hugely overwhelming majority (excuse the emphasis, but it's meant deliberately) of reading from well outside school material.

For some reason that I do not understand, some schools insist on supplying their pupils with vastly inferior reading materials. Accept their poo-like school books for what they are and get real books as fast as you can.

some schools will only move them when their 'other' skills such as inference and so on are in line with the reading level, others will move them up reading levels based on their more basic reading ability and more basic comprehension skills. does that make sense.
I think yellow is possibly a wee bit behind where they 'suggest' a child would be but then if he is capable of reading harder then it doesn't matter and it depends on age and other factors too.

The main thing is can he blend and does he know all the phonics he has been taught so far. if so then he is fine.

I definitely wouldn't be worried about blue level at this stage. If you look at the chart it would suggest blue level for roughly the first term in Y1 (but obviosuly doesn't take into account age etc) but I found with both my DCs they did not move up after a set amount of time.

In YR DS2 was only on red books when he finished and started Y1 reading them. He just moved onto Orange level last week but I imagine he will be on this level possibly even till the end of the year as they are quite challenging for him.

It can be complicated with the comprehension thing, I find with DS2 he has better comprehension than his reading skills but can't move on until he can read better whereas DS1 was finding the reading part very easy (he was lime level at this stage in Y1) but had lots of comprehension targets to meet that were hard for his age/maturity.

I read with year one and there is quite a range of levels in this year group:
some children on red
most are on blue or yellow
couple of children on green
At this age children can make huge leaps in progress, plateau for a while then another leap.

I also read with year 2 and there is a huge range there too - some just moved up to green and others on lime.

DD1 is on purple along with a couple of others and she seems to have just made a massive leap. Her school seems to like the approach nonickname describes. Her level seems commensurate with her other abilities so I'm quite happy: her writing and spelling is excellent. I know of other children who may be on a higher level, but who can barely spell out a sentence independently.

I read with Y1s - some are on Stage 1 and some are Stage 10 - there's a huge variety.

My son is on "lower" level books now in year 1 than he was in reception but I am quite happy as the last teacher was keen on racing through them and this years teacher seems more interested in quality of reading and the different skills involved that my son needs to work on, they have different approaches and I don't believe it's done him any harm either way. Unlike a lot of people though that say their child reads much harder books at home, my son still reads books that are meant for 5 year old children as his reading tastes are no different to another boy in his class who may be not as fluent.

This probably sounds completely awful and stealth boasty but DD1's last book was about being evacuated in World War 2, which she had no clue about and therefore struggled, not to read it, but the whole concept of war/air raids/gas masks/evacuation etc. etc. She's only just 6 and it's not something we've really covered at home, so ilikenoodles makes a very good point.

Hi Mamababa:

First off be aware that various reading schemes use slightly different colours - so my advice is type in the publisher (collins big cat/ oxford reading tree/ etc...) and see what there chart says.

Talk to the teacher - and ask what you can do at home.

We missed the boat with DD1 but we found using the jolly phonics work books (school uses jolly phonics to teach phonetics system in Year R) really helped with reading. There are 7 I think - and they are like a colouring book - so you can work through sounds, practice a bit of writing, colour in pictures and it just seems like fun.

HTH

We've had WWII reading books too. We just read the words without worrying too much about all the military jargon. My daughter still doesn't know what a tank is. I remember giving some kind of an explanation and turning the page over quickly. The bit we did linger on was the children at the railway station with cardboard signs round their necks. That could be related to. The other thing I remember saying was that back then the houses kept falling down and making a huge mess of the streets.

See I'm the opposite from some of you, yr 1 DS was moved from red to blue when it was (is) too hard for him so I feel like I've had to stamp my feet a bit to keep him on yellow for a while instead. I've had this before where I felt like school was moving them on too quickly. I am extremely happy with him on yellow, he's doing great. Blue in 6-10 weeks, maybe.

*Big sis has been reading with him tonite. Awww....

I think sometimes the more advanced children can be poorly served if the reading scheme books they are getting are actually designed to support weaker older readers. I was a little cross when my daughter had a series of books home (late year 1 or year 2, can't recall) that were easy retellings of classics such as Black Beauty or Heidi etc - because she was nearly ready to read the originals anyway or would be in due course and there was no need for her to think that she'd read them already ...