Teacher pushing back with regard to reception reading books - how do I avoid an annoying exchange with her?

[Quangle]

So DS is 4 - youngest in the class. But holding his own in Reception and doing well. He was sent home in November with some level 3 books which seemed about right and obviously since then there's been lots of work at home and at school so he's now consolidated at that level or a bit higher (we use the songbirds ones at home and he's happy working through level 4 with me but that's probably only because we ran out of level 3 stories).

At some point after November the books from school went back down to level 2 - no idea why and some of them only have 16 words in the whole book and he's past that. I put the odd comment in the book journal "DS read this fluently - could the levels be reassessed?" over the months but nothing happened and the books continued to be too simple. New reception teacher then arrives at half term and level 2 continues. I mention again this week "could DS go back to level 3 - he's easily managing these books?" and get back a message "I have sent home more level 2 books - he can go up when he has read ALL the level 2 books" (her caps!).

My problem is, how do you push back against the pointless pushing back without being an arse? I've had children in the school for 4 years and have never been into school other than for parents' meetings so I'm not the painful pushy mum but now I realise I'm bad at getting my message across.

I know this seems like a tiny issue but because DS is so young (and weirdly, there are no other summer babies in the class) and so not top of the class (in an academic school) but also quite well behaved so not calling attention to himself in other ways, I don't want him to be invisible to her.

I got moved schools when the school I was in insisted on doing this with me when I was in reception (rather a lot of decades ago).

I would ask for 5 books a night if he's going through them that quickly...

It's odd isn't it - reception teacher refused to change a book...ds stayed on pink the whole year, year one teacher moved him on so fast it was frightening and year 2 teacher made him read every book in the box and some of them were really unsuitable - holocaust for 7year olds?...not once did I think any of them were actually making decisions based on my ds's reading ability.
You learn it's pointless to try and fix it because the main thing is that your dc can read and enjoys it, not what box they get their book out of. So you get your own books and forget about the school's eccentric approach.

I don't think it matters, as people say, just go to the library.

The EYFS guideline states that children must progrss through reading at their own pace and do not have therefore to stick to a system of levels or colour coding.
print off a copy from gov website highlight para and send it in to school.

You don't want to seem to be disobeying school rules (even as a parent). But, you don't want to subject your children to endless meaningless rubbish either, just because the school commands that it should be so.

So, what do you do?

Well, in reality I have no idea.

But, at the moment, my plan is to say, this is bollocks. And, we are going to read Alice in Wonderland and discuss it because I think it's far more useful that Biff shoves Chip's head in the washing machine Part Three.

(End of, really.)

Hi Quangle:

I haven't read all the posts but just wanted to add because someone did this for me here on MN about 5 years ago that

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO READ THE BOOK THE SCHOOL SENDS HOME

It's a radical idea - but you can find other books that are more appropriate/ interesting/ exciting for your DC to read as well. No school is going to object to your son reading something else.

Our approach with the parent comment in the reading diary was to say things like: After 2 evenings reading X DD2 was reading it fluently and asked if she could read something else, so we read Y.

Sometimes we put DD2 is bored with Big Panda/ Little Panda (which we've had for 3 weeks now) - so we've decided to read books at home until you exchange this for something else. (OFSTED saw that one. Hee, hee!).

Now going it alone can seem intimidating - what should I select - what is appropriate:

Relax - you can help your DC read words they can't manage. They benefit from hearing your read to them (there was a stage when DD1 was ready for Charlotte's web (age 9) but didn't have the reading skills to do it herself). I read it to her & DD2 in the evenings after bath and they both adored it.

Help is at hand:

Oxford Owl Reading has free e-books which are ordered by age: www.oxfordowl.co.uk/welcome/for-home/reading-owl/reading - and you can fairly swiftly work out what is appropriate or not. It's free - you just need to sign up. There are also resources under EXPERT HELP about supporting your child with phonics/ learning to read.

They also now offer early maths help there too.

Finally - it may be worthwhile finding out what the phonics scheme is that your school is using. Most schemes, like jolly phonics, have workbooks (in the case of jolly phonics 7 colouring book style workbooks) which we discovered for DD2 and they made a huge difference in her learning to read and helped with letter formation/ writing skills.

HTH

MY comments in my son's reading record went, over a week of reading his home reader
Monday-Read his book fluently
Tuesday-Read his book again, still fluently
Wednesday- Read his book again, still fluent, answered questions on his book with ease
Thursday-Read his book again, we read it backwards this time
Friday-Didn't read his book as he knows it by heart.

Things moved on from there!!

Some schools do seem to have a "read every book in the colour band" mentality. Children should be reading books that provide a balance of comfort and challenge.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO READ THE BOOK THE SCHOOL SENDS HOME

It depends on the school At our school you are expected to read the books and comment on them. I have had a long discussion with the literacy coordinator about this. Our current policy doesn't make any sense. Everybody concerned knows that it doesn't make any sense. Nobody knows what to do about it. On the whole the problem seems to be that there is no point in changing anything for the odd exception here and there. (Which on the whole I agree with.) But then the problem is what do you do with the odd exception here and there? (If you don't change anything, then you carry on with the same policy regardless of the odd exception here and there.) Now, that seems like a great idea, unless you happen to be the odd exception.

Read the book once, write in every night that you have but read something else instead and write that in too!

"DS read Floppy Floppy and War and Peace tonight and enjoyed them both"
Job Done.

Column:

our policy was like yours. So my comments were literally:

DD2 is reading X fluently and wants to read Y so we read that.

If there was a task (talk about what might happen next midway through the story) - we just applied it to whatever we were reading.

We're at a state school - so maybe that's a bit different -but basically we were complying/ supporting their homework policy and could show that they weren't meeting the parent/ teacher agreement by regularly refreshing books. (Or regularly providing access to the school library).

OFSTED agreed that books should be changed at least weekly, and I got the inspectors I spoke with to admit that better schools here send 2 books home a week or change them 2x a week. And to agree that the point was the child was reegularly reading & building skills, not necessarily that they were regularly reading what the school sent home.

Initially we did read both the school book and other books but the teacher wrote telling us not to write about non school books in the diary. To be honest there are too many things wrong with the policy to go into in detail and there are some pretty common sense ways to fix it which don't seem to be allowed. From my experience with the policy I can only conclude that having a cast iron policy with no exceptions works very well most of the time. (And, if you're one of the cases in which it doesn't work, then that's your problem.)

A kind of 99.9 percent success rate ain't bad, approach.

"Some schools do seem to have a "read every book in the colour band" mentality" - I have learnt something from MN that I never realised was happening in RL from my own experiences. It is really sad that this happens in some schools.

In the occasional case there is also "finished the book band (by racing through them rather than them actually being educational and the child being able to decode the words when met elsewhere or being able to remember/ discuss the story) so we need the next set" issue here. Teachers do have to balance the ready to move on with the parent and child who see getting through the colour bands as a competitive race that in no way aids the reading development of that child. It is a tough line to walk at times.

Personally I think there is another use of the books which we haven't really considered, which is a

have the children reached this point, yet
(a bit like the phonics check)

I can see that use of a reading scheme as being a perfectly valid use of setting the whole class or age group the same reading books (just like the same screening check or the same SAT paper.)

But, if you're going to use reading scheme books to do this (as I'm sure our school does) then it might be worthwhile altering the frequency in lots of cases. Once you've done the phonics check you don't keep doing the same check 3-5 times a week for six years!

With my daughter's school they will sometimes go back and read an earlier book band again. I think its good because it reviews a particula phonics sound again.

I personally wouldn't bother arguing a reading level with a teacher, even if I think its too easy. I read other books with my children. For example, Harry Potter is too advanced for my year 2 daughter so I read to her and every once in a ask if she wants to read a paragraph. It's too hard but reinforces her comprehension and when she's ready she'll attempt. We've read a chapter book series together, where she reads the picture pages.

I personally wouldn't bother arguing a reading level with a teacher

I don't know how far arguing ever gets anybody. Once you're in an argument two opposing sides have already formed. However, if a school insists on having inappropriate books read, discussed and commented on, it's not all that easy to rub along with the situation.

If the school is very flexible in its approach, then dodgy school books may well be no problem.

In theory it shouldn't be too difficult for somebody in an institution to point out why he or she wishes to administer this drug or that reading book within the context of the policy. But what appears to happen sometimes is that the person explaining the action just says

that's our policy.

Perhaps just read one a night until you've read them all? My mum did that with me. She'd taught me to read at home, and I was happily reading Beatrix Potter etc by Reception. The school had the policy that you had to start at the beginning of the reading scheme and read every book in order. So we did - I read whatever they sent home each night, my mum wrote in the book, and then we read something from home. My mum laughed about it years later, but warned me the same might happen when I have children!

Some schools with silly policies are happy to give parents huge numbers of books to rush through (and some are not.)

But, if schools are sending children home with boxes of books to read, does that not suggest that someone somewhere does not actually agree with the policy and is helping the child to effectively circumvent it (albeit by hard labour!)

I wrote some little books for DS1 when he was in reception, as school didn't seem to be changing his reading book often enough. Plus the library, as so many others have said.

Much easier now he's a free reader!

"how do you push back against the pointless pushing back without being an arse?"

You can't.

Does it help if you relax and try not to view the book sent home from school as any sort of judgement on DS or his reading level? Just as a job that needs to be got through like brushing teeth? Your DS isn't going to be affected by reading some books which are boring, as long as you're also reading interesting things with him at home.

*"how do you push back against the pointless pushing back without being an arse?"

You can't.*

about sums it up, really.

I don't know if there is a real defence for making a child read an endless succession of stupid books, but if I was to try to defend such a policy I would do it like this:

Hello, Mrs Bottle, I don't know whether or not you child has a reading issue and there is no easy way for me to tell. But caution is the order of the day. So, what we've decided to do is ask your child to read this huge selection of stupid books and if he or she does it marvellously then we can say with absolute certainty that there wasn't a problem.

The brilliant thing about this defence is that it can be applied to anybody without changing it or thinking about it because it's always true.

Quangle Reading levels are a contentious issue on here.

You will see from many teachers responses ( on here) which is just a snap shot of course: they are defensive about them, usually preferring to believe the child is barking at print, or not really understanding what they are reading or anything than the fact the child can actually read that level and go higher.

I would write a little sweet note back, as humbly as possible, and say your son was moved to level 3, and your more than happy with him reading the 50 or so books back down in level 2 but your worried as to the reason why, for instance, is he shy at school, are there other problems you are not aware of, because he is reading level 4 books at home with you and your worried he is being shy and not reading properly in school.

FWIW reading is not an easy thing to capture and quantify they can improve so quickly these schemes seem more like shackles than aids to reading.

The gold level non fiction ones seem sort of reasonable, I suppose.

But towards the lower ends of the scheme the entire design and ethos of a reading scheme seems predicated on the notion that children either can't read or can't read much.

It's a bit more of a non-reading scheme than a reading scheme.

And it does seem as though the stupidity of it all is artificially elongated for the benefit/profit of the publishers.

I think children would be better off in general if scheme books were used to prop up shaky shelves or plug leaky roofs.