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.

catkind perhaps ask if your child knows what sound it is (CGs example of ) and if not tell them

I honestly ?ouldn't worry about what your child is reading in school. When DS was in P1 he was put in an accelerated reading group before Christmas where they got to read Roald Dahl and other books on a similar level. That summer, the teacher leading the group retired and they disbanded it. So in P2 he was back to reading short books with lots of pretty pictures and 2-3 sentences per page. We just made sure he did his required reading and bought heaps of more suitable books for him to read at home. He's 11 now and is still a voracious reader.

Er yes mrz, that's what I do. Just trying to point out how daft and indeed impossible it would be to refuse to teach your child any phonics at home. In response to someone upthread saying it was "usurping" the teacher's job to do so.

As a yr 1 teacher I think it's strange not to let a child progress when they are ready, why keep them on books that do not provide a challenge? Could you go and talk to the head teacher about your concerns?

collum, apologies for the late reply - you may not even be watching this any more.

DS in Yr4 came home with a reading diary that they are to write in regularly. We do this, but we do it with his books from home. We were instructed in a parents evening meeting what sort of things they were expecting in the diaries and how to guide the children. So we do all of that, but we do it with Roald Dahl, or David Walliams, or Spike Milligan or similar.

I didn't make a fuss because I got to the point that I was just sick of being THAT parent. I couldn't make yet another fuss and I didn't want to have to fight DS about reading again. So we went our way. At parents evening the other week = no mention from any teacher about reading scheme books and he gets team points for his reading diary comments, so I hope all is well!

As an aside, I agree that it's possible to usurp, and it's something I am very careful to avoid. I've always double checked with teachers what methods they are using for phonics, what methods are used for certain maths problems - I don't want to be complicating matters for the child by encouraging them to learn in a way that is at odds with what they are learning at school. I do firmly believe that an awful lot of the reading scheme books are awful though.