Any scottish primary teachers around? P1 question.

[Crutchlow35]

DS is coming to the end of P1 already. Don't know where the year has gone!

He seems to be doing ok with most things but struggling a bit with reading. I am trying to get a firmer answer from school but his teacher is off sick at the moment.

I want to buy the biff and chip books to keep going with reading over the summer but I don't know which level to buy. What, on average should a child's reading be at this stage? Possibly a difficult question as they all learn differently. Thanks.

not scottish nor a teacher BUT I would say you need to start with where he is at not where you think he should be.

The best books would be phonics based ones, there are quite a few different ones, personally I like the songbirds ones. The Book People have a set of them (all 6 levels) for about £16 at the moment if you look on their website in collections. 36 books if I remember right. Then I would suggest just working through them.

Hi, I'm a p1 mum, not a teacher.

My son in p1 is my youngest . I wouldn't worry too much about levels at this stage.

Our school does the Oxford reading tree, you can get some good apps for that.

My son is on level5 but looking back my daughter was on level7 at same age.

try the Oxford Owl website too - free ORT books online

Thanks. I went with biff and chip because those are the books he has been reading in P1.

Ds only learnt to read towards the end of P2 (age 6.5). All through P1, I said, "He's not blending" as he was just learning the books by heart (even though he was in the "top" group). The school said not to worry as some kids especially boys just don't "get" it until they're 6 - they're just not developmentally ready.

He had 6 weeks 1:1 support from the depute head at the beginning of P2 before (by mutual agreement) moving him to the middle group, where he stayed until (I think) the end of P4.

Throughout that time (on the advice of the school) we encouraged him to read whatever interested him - and that included things like "Captain Underpants" and the football reports in papers (which is actually what eventually really motivated him - finding out the Queens Park results). The important thing was to get him to see the benefit of reading and not to force it.

He is now in S2, in the top set for English, studying Kidnapped and of Mice & Men, doing (presumably mock?) Nat 5 assessments and (to me, most importantly) free reading (currently reading one of the Northern Lights trilogy).

You can buy a set of Biff and Chips that gives the first levels - up to and including Level 5. That's all you should need. When he's finished those you could try Early Readers like Horrid Henry. Children will be working on a range of different levels at the end of P1, can depend a bit on their age sometimes. DD2 is on Level 5 but DS was probably level 3 or 4 at the end of P1.

Thank you all for your advice.

I think the newer editions of Biff, Chip and Kipper are more phonetic but it does depend on the books. If he is struggling a bit then it could well be they are teaching phonics but then the books aren't really following phonics so he is finding it hard work. Perhaps start with Oxford Owl, try a few of the different types and levels and see how he gets on. There are normal biff, chip and kipper ones on there as well as songbirds phonics, project x phonics ones, non fiction and more.