Reading Age

[WaffleWiffle]

DD has just started Year 5. Throughout school her reading age has always been slightly older than her actual age. However:

End of Year 3 reading age was 9y 2m (her actual age was 8y 9m)
End of Year 4 reading age was 9y 1m (her actual age was 9y 9m)

Clearly this is very worrying - her reading age has gone down yet she is a year older.

I'm a bit underwhelmed with advise from school on this. Just suggested really obvious things like:

• reading with her every night
• reading a variety of texts and styles
• reading for pleasure
• discussing about the books

Slightly insulting since we do and advocate all of these and always have with all of our children. There is nothing new there that we don't already do. The teacher knows we are supportive, but not pushy, parents. He seemed at a loss as to how to answer my questions.

No explanation from the school about why this massive change in reading age happened last year.

The only change school has made is that she has been moved from 'free reading' (where she can read what she likes) back onto the structured reading levels (she is at the top level though) - which I am happy with but does not offer me any explanation or help really.

Could the reading age test be wrong?
Is this likely or am I just clutching at straws?

Perhaps she had an 'off' day when they did the test, maybe feeling a bit tired or poorly or distracted.

Unless you actually think her reading hasn't progressed then I wouldn't worry about it.

Firstly, don't get too hung up on that 1 month drop. It is very likely to be within the standard error of test measurement. So it is likely that she probably hasn't actually got worse. However, she has clearly had a plateau.

You also had a child who was 'average plus' (ie a few months ahead) who is now 'average minus' (ie a few months behind), both of those scores will be within the 'average range' - they are not massively away from her real age in either direction either before or since. Children's learning isn't always linear which you need to bear in mind as well, it is possible that she has hit a natural plateau and will have another 'spurt' imminently.

However having said all that, sometimes children start to hit problems in around year 4 because there is less emphasis on decoding skills and more on comprehension and application.

So, what you need to establish is what was being measured in the tests. Is it a pure decoding assessment where they are looking at how well a child can read words with no check on their comprehension (these tests are around but not used that often nowadays) or whether it was a decode - and -answer questions about the passage' test. If it was the latter, then you need to find out whether the decoding and comprehension were at the same level, or whether, for example, she was good at decoding but less able at comprehension and this brought her score down. If you can find this out, it will give you a clue as to where to focus your efforts - whether on 'hearing her read' and monitoring decoding skills or whether the lagging skill is around discussion of the story, characters, motivations etc.

Either way, don't panic. This score is a red flag, not a disaster.

If the school is using a standardised test there will, as clairewitch says, a margin of error of at least 1 year in either direction (up or down). This is never reported!

Where I might differ from her is in the decoding/comprehension area. It is quite possible that your dd has encountered words which are beyond the limits of her phonic skills, cannot 'read' them and so cannot comprehend them. The difference of 1 month will most probably be represented by only 1 word in the reading test so it is possible that she reached a ceiling with decoding last year and hasn't been helped to improve her phonic skills in the intervening time. As texts increasingly contain more complex words it often catches out children whose phonic knowledge is not secure but who have got by with guessing in fairly predictable texts.

With all the reading that you do with her at home are you happy that she understands what she reads and that she has a good vocabulary? If you are, I doubt if it was the comprehension aspect of the test that she had difficulty with.

If you don't think she lacks phonic or comprehension skills I wouldn't worry about it; perhaps she just had an off day when she took the test. It will be boring for her to have to go back to the levelled books but she can read whatever she likes out of school!

Thank you all of you for your responses. I hadn't realised that the margin or error was quite so large for these tests. That might be why the teacher was somewhat dismissive as no big deal.