Book bands - reception - again!

[Bumpsadaisie]

After the previous posts about book bands and schools attitudes to moving kids up, my DD has suddenly come home with an ORT Read At Home Book marked Level 3C (but when I look it up on Amazon it is marked level 4).

So now I am totally confused. I had got to grips with stages and book bands, but what are "levels"!

Does this mean she has been moved up a bit from the yellow books she has been on?

I think each 'colour' level has an a, b and c. So a blue c could also be a yellow a. At the moment by son has a yellow rigby star book from school but school class it as a blue so have put a blue label on it. He is almost ready to move up to the yellow level.

I'm sure someone else will come along and explain it better

My son is on white level book band (yr2). Some of the books he brings home have the white sticker on them, then say a certain level (by number). I've googled the book / level recently, and found that for one particular book, google tells me that his 'white' book is in fact only 'purple' according to whatever web page I came across .

I think there can be variations between schools in the book banding / associated number level. I certainly don't understand it, but am just happy that DS seems to be progressing well and enjoys reading. I wouldnt worry about it too much - so long as your DD is reading, enjoying and progressing.

I think that lots of older books got rebanded, as ORT used to have their own system of levelling books. To fit them within the colour bands some books went up and some went down, and to keep up schools have just put the right colour stickers onto their old books.

ORT level 3c is usually yellow, but DDs school only start sending home the ORT read at home books when they think DD is about ready to move up a band because they are older and don't quite fit the levels so they use them almost as a stepping stone between the levels.

We had a set of read at home books from Book People. I found that the read at home books were definitely more difficult than the ORT of the same colour. Eg read at home level 3 more like stage 4 books. I heard this was because the read at home books were not meant to be scheme books use for independent reading by the child but apparently for parents to do shared reading of them with their children.

Read at Home series, confusingly, have their own levelling system. This is how they compare to stages:

Level 1 (Getting Ready) = Stage 1-1+
Level 2 (Starting to Read) = Stage 2-3
Level 3 (Becoming a Reader) = Stage 3-4
Level 4 (Building Confidence) = Stage 4-5
Level 5 (Reading with Confidence) = Stage 5-7

Does it matter?

It does matter to me, yes. I do want to know if she has suddenly gone up one or two book bands. It makes me feel happy that she has done.

I'm probably quite a sad case

Level 1 (Getting Ready) = Stage 1-1+
Level 2 (Starting to Read) = Stage 2-3
Level 3 (Becoming a Reader) = Stage 3-4
Level 4 (Building Confidence) = Stage 4-5
Level 5 (Reading with Confidence) = Stage 5-7

ddmummy Thanks so much for this! Is it really how they compare? If so, it would explain a) why there are SO many more words in the read at home series than the ones from school b) why the expectations of number of words read is so much higher on the read at home ones and c) why going up a level at school, my dd still seems to be reading above that level at home. I just like it when it all makes sense to me .