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Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

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Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

Primary education

What is the average reading level by this point of reception?

65 replies

Adikia · 07/02/2014 11:28

I don't mean what is your child on as there are some very smart reception children about, just what is the level DD should aim for?

My son is G&T so don't want to compare them plus he's 10, so I can't really remember where he was by this part of term other than him having better stories in his books.

OP posts:

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IdRatherPlayHereWithAllTheMadM · 10/02/2014 22:27

just like I can't stand in the playground and pick out the kids who walked at 9 months

V good point

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LiegeAndLief · 10/02/2014 22:11

I really wouldn't worry about reception reading levels. My ds was very slow off the mark and didn't bring a reading book home at all until te beginning of Y1. He was a free reader in Y2. I'm sure by the time they finish primary you won't have a clue who was first onto gold etc, just like I can't stand in the playground and pick out the kids who walked at 9 months.

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freetrait · 10/02/2014 21:57

I am teaching the new sounds as DD is eager and I don't see why she shouldn't learn them if she's ready. Go with the child is a good mantra. Ie if child ready and eager to learn, even leading it, go, go ,go with it. You are daft not to IMO.

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GhoulWithADragonTattoo · 09/02/2014 21:48

I think yellow is good to be honest. Am pretty sure my DD was on yellow this time last year. She finished reception on blue. She is a good reader who couldn't read when she started school. A few classmates were higher than this but they were the ones who started school reading. Your DD is doing fine.

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GoodnessIsThatTheTime · 09/02/2014 21:45

We've found that free. I'm caught between giving her the next stage up but with an awareness that school hasn't taught some of the "newer" sounds yet.

So we often just revise books I know she can read so she gains confidence.

We like the oxford owl website generally. But it shows how rubbish some of the biff/kipper ones are as they're not all phonetically matched.

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freetrait · 09/02/2014 21:08

DD, Autumn born, reading yellow/blue. However, rather like with her brother I am now finding that we are driving her reading. What I mean by this is that she has an ability, appetite and willingness to read more and more, to learn more sounds and basically LEARN TO READ (fluently), but school are rather stuck on the softly softly approach. So, as with her brother I am supplying books, and being led by her on how much she wants to do. For example today she read about 3 or 4 blue phonics stories.
More reading generally means more practice which means more improvement. However, you can't force it, their brains and motivation go in stages, it's a bit like catching the wave. If you catch the wave and go with it you can make a lot of progress in a short time. Then it will be time to back off for a while until the next wave etc.

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AGoodPirate · 09/02/2014 12:12

We are year one and just moved from getting a mix of pink, yellow, and red - to blue, green and turquoise.
The books are loads longer! Summer born here.

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SapphireMoon · 08/02/2014 20:17

Pink, pink, pinkerty pink here/ level 1.
La, la, la and fingers in ears to all you other colours!!

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GoodnessIsThatTheTime · 08/02/2014 19:26

She's doing really well then :)

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Adikia · 08/02/2014 18:56

Thank's all, DD has just moved on to yellow (as in moved up on Thursday). It's parent's evening next week so I'll talk to the teacher then, it's just because there's a group of super competitive mum's and loud conversations about 'oooh Tarquin, you've got a green book' are quite common at the school gates and starting to get to me. DS was a free reader by year 1 so it was never an issue with him as I didn't have a level to compare.

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zingally · 08/02/2014 14:43

I teach infants.

The average reception child... Doesn't really exist. Although I'd be happy enough with a child who knows the vast majority of their single letter sounds and can sound out and blend 3 and 4 letter phonic words. Most chn are still on pink at this stage in the year, some will be on red and a very few might be on blue.

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tricot39 · 08/02/2014 14:30

This thread is very interesting and highlights how different schools can be - even when theoretically they are all on eyfs!

Our school is not using book bands in yr. The average progress seems to be compound phonic sounds like oo and oi this last week or so. This seems very slow compared to ds' school nursery where they did phonics in the latter part of the year and by the end were sounding out simple words. By the time ds started school he could read basic stuff but we had no idea how much..... He was taken out of phonics and reads with y1. Other kids do y1/y2 different groups depending on their stage. I think this is great fr our ds but think maybe the average pace for the rest may be too slow. I am sure the school whete ds was at nursery uses a phonics scheme which got them onto books (albeit simple ones) quickly. I am interested to see how all these different methods pan out. No idea if thid helps you op!?

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AcrylicPlexiglass · 08/02/2014 08:50

Learning to read to a fluent level is more like toilet training than washing, ime. You need the child to be ready AND give them lots of opportunities to learn and practice AND keep your cool and stay encouraging when they have setbacks. The vast majority will get there in the end with good teaching and practice once the readiness is there, imo.

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columngollum · 08/02/2014 08:34

I don't think anyone ever said that early reading equals career success, not parents or teachers. But reading must be done. It's one thing ticked off the list. No one ever said washing was all there is to housework. But that's not an argument in favour of neglecting it, being lax about it or pretending that it doesn't matter. Both are tasks which it makes perfect sense to accomplish swiftly and efficiently.

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AcrylicPlexiglass · 08/02/2014 08:29

Read to them everyday and get them to read to you as much as possible as long as it's not frustrating them and you (if it is back off). Most children will start reading fluently at some point by the end of infants. I wonder whether there is any correlation between early reading fluency and reading as an older child/adult? I don't remember learning to read but know it came easily and early to me. Nowadays I hardly ever read anything apart from computer screens. My sons barely read a thing either unless forced. One of them taught himself to read before reception and never used the school reading scheme and the other struggled for ages before having a lightbulb moment at about 6. Neither of them has a love of books particular ly, despite having a librarian for a dad!

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RiversideMum · 08/02/2014 07:33

I think the thing to remember is that it's not a competition. Parents in reception get very hung up on reading as it's the main thing that they can measure (given that levels in maths and writing don't exist yet). In my experience, most children, apart from those that need lots of extra ongoing help, are readers by the end of reception. I don't give out books til the children can blend for reading. At the moment, half my class have books - which is a little behind where we were last year, but ahead of the year before that. It is certainly not the case that the children who are very early readers are always the brightest or always go on to have marvellous success later in school.

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WidowWadman · 07/02/2014 21:59

I've no idea what level my daughter is on, as the reading books she brings home (and the e-books she can access via school login) are too easy for her and she's flying through them.

We asked the teacher before to give her more challenging books, but were told we should feel free to let her read whatever she wants from the library, but the reading books from school have a different purpose, whatever that is. She's in the top group, so at least gets as much support as she can in her class, I guess.

She's a ravenous reader, however tends to do also a lot of circumstancial guessing, which means that nonsense words are not easy to her, as she'll first guess a proper word before slowing down and sounding out when asked.

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pyrrah · 07/02/2014 21:54

Haven't a clue - DD's school don't do reading with sets of books so no way of knowing what level anyone is on. She has a huge variety of books come home from lots of different schemes and none.

I'm not really too worried about her level anyway. As long as she is enjoying school and enjoying reading and going forwards not backwards then that is all I care about. She's not the kind of kid who would take kindly to my 'encouraging' anything.

The school get phenomenal results so I'm just sitting back and trusting them to get on with it. If they think there is an issue then I'm sure they will let me know.

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Brightoncheery · 07/02/2014 21:42

DS summer born, not reading before school, on orange, reads with ease but not being moved further as school considers that subject matter too old. Instead he reads books from school and public libraries, which he enjoys. He seems so little to be at school, so as long as he's happy and enjoying school I'm happy!

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lalasmum17 · 07/02/2014 20:17

I REALLY wouldn't fret about reading levels. The link to the chart from 3 bunnies might help you guess how the books your child reads link into the book bands (i remember trying to figure it out for myself and I am sure my DD's colours didn't correspond). I still think you should make a conscious effort to add a couple of new words to your child's vocab every day and explain the meaning. Later on, when they see a word and try to sound it out but it does quite work they can probably correct themselves having understood the context.

We had a sorry slog through ditty sheets in reception autumn term and I really did wonder why my daughter couldn't link noises to symbols. Then something "clicked" and we had books after a couple of months. Some of the older kids were reading school letters about clubs whereas my daughter was still at the stage of sounding out and summarising. With all the backwards writing and then, better still, starting to read a sentence then suddenly reading a word in the middle backwards I prepped myself.

Fast forward to year 2 she LOVES reading and those scheme books are a very distant memory.

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Honsandrevels · 07/02/2014 19:48

Thanks Rafa, that makes sense. The reading chest chart doesn't show green at all until a later stage which confused me, although I was pretty sure she hadn't shot through five bands without me noticing!

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Blu · 07/02/2014 19:34

DS couldn't read at all by this stage in R, I don't think.
He sailed out of primary with 5A SATS and is now tagged G&T in literacy in secondary.

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HarveySchlumpfenburger · 07/02/2014 18:53

Honsandrevels it's not that the phonics one are different colours.

There are lots of different reading schemes and each one levels their books in their own way. So for example, all level 2 ORT books, regardless of series have a green spine because that's the colour they chose when they created the scheme. All level 3 ORT have a blue spine.

Some school only use one scheme so they can easily use the scheme they have as it is set out. Other schools use a variety of schemes. Book bands were created to help these schools to group books from different schemes into roughly equivalent levels which are each given a colour. There are a couple of different banding schemes and some schools have created their own.

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BucketsnSpades · 07/02/2014 17:59

I have just checked out 3bunnies link and DS bookbag. He is on blue books at his school. The content of the books looks exactly like the sample pages of the pink books on the link.

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3bunnies · 07/02/2014 17:01

Also remember that different teachers/schools have different policies to putting them up a level. Our school has some magic formula which seems to be a mixture of child's ability, teacher's preferences and parent pushiness. For instance twins in parallel classes might be able to read each other's books but could be on very different reading levels because one teacher likes them to be reading every single word quickly without decoding and only listens to them every few weeks whereas another teacher listens to them every week and is happy to put them up when they can decode most of the words. Another school insists that they read every single book at every single level as each book has a different emphasis on different sounds. A child of the same ability could be at different bands in the different schools/ classes.