Yellow band reading year 1

[Sleepswithbutterflies]

Ds is 5.3 and just beginning to read yellow band. Should I be worried?
He doesn't seem to be making a fat lot of progress. His writing and numeracy are much better.

He has had major problems with his eyesight which we discovered in march. He is a +9.5 in his left eye and a +7.5 in the right. We are having to patch to help the left eye which makes doing extra reading tricky since he's patched when he gets home until bedtime and the vision in the left eye is really really poor. The glasses aren't helping apparently, the right eye is doing all the work.

So yeah, should I be worried? Friend's dd (just six months older) is reading stage 6. I know I shouldn't compare but it just seems such slow progress for ds. He knows all the reception he words and sbout half the one two words but doesn't seem to commit other words to memory and has to sound them out every time. I wonder if it's because the sight words were on large flash cards originally which means he's been able to see them better.

I know I shouldn't stress but I just can't see him making the expected level in year 2, or being a stage 6 as expected by the end of year 1.

I think yellow at this stage of y1 is about average. Definitely not behind. I know it's easier said than done but I wouldn't worry at this stage and if reading books is difficult due to the patch then leave it for a bit. Get him to read signs and things while you are out, and make sure you read to him lots so he can associate books with fun rather than hard work.

Totally fine -- from memory that was dead average at the start of my DC's Y1 classes. Y1 is the year group where there is the most variation IME - you will likely have children ranging from every book band from pink to lime.

I wouldn't be worried at this stage, this is where a lot of children are at the beginning of Y1. The progress he makes during the course of the year will be a good indicator as to whether there is anything you need to be concerned about. The 4 colours after yellow are blue, green, orange and turquoise. I would say that if he's on orange by the end of Y1, he's pretty much on track to be at the expected level by the end of Y2. When you break that down over the year, he would need to be on (or close to) blue by Christmas, green by Easter and orange by the end of the summer term which is more than do-able for most children. I'm not an eye expert, but I've always been told that black print on yellow paper is easier to read for children with visual difficulties than black print on white paper, so that might be worth a try for his HFWs?

I wouldn't necessarily be worried, DS2 was only on red (so lower than yellow) going into Y1 but he ended on white level, so he improved by 8 levels that year. He had eye sight problems and it was obviously just a bit later clicking.

My daughter is in Y1. She's in the top group for reading and is on yellow. Doing RWI in phonics and is way ahead compared with ORT book bands, the school say they like them to be totally secure in each level before moving them up (outstanding primary with way above average SATS results)

Yes thinking about what sleepless said, some schools move children up once they can read the books well and some keep them on the same level until they have covered all comprehension aspects of that level. It may be that your school is similar to sleepless's school, DS1s old school was the same so took a lot longer to move up whereas DS2s school cover comprehension separately to book bands as they like to challenge them with the reading. Both ways have advantages/disadvantages.

My DC school aim to have kids on stage 3 (yellow) by the end of reception.

Yr1 has barely started, I wouldn't expect a child to have progressed up yet (obviously it does happen).

I have been in yr1 this year & listened to every single year 1 kid read. Tbh most of them are on red/pink, a handful on yellow & a couple on green.

Others have replied already on your main point but I just wanted to pick upon your last paragraph. Reading was SO non-linear for my DD. It was like speech, she plodded along making hardly any progress for a couple of terms, then all of a sudden one week it all came together. She went up one band in the whole year between easter of YR and easter of Y1, then 5 bands in a term! I think the big spurt is quite common. Some have it in YR, some in Y3, others possibly not at all. But you really can't predict from how he's reading now, how he will do by the end of this year, or next. And by Y3 or 4 they will all be reading well. By and large, you won't be able to tell the YR prodigies from the late bloomers, any more than you can tell the early walkers from the late in a group of Y1s.

By all means keep the eyesight in mind but he sounds like he is doing fine. No need to stress about his reading levels at the end of this school year or any other time.

Another one here to echo erin's point - improvement in reading ability was definitely not linear for ds1.

He plodded along very slowly until the middle of Y2 (despite being considered a 'bright' boy in everything else he did) - he just didn't get it and trying to get him to do some reading in the evening was a real struggle every night, it was painful for both of us and just trying to read even a page or two of a book which had a maximum of 10 words a page - I would need to set aside 20 minutes and would give up usually not having got to the end but with plenty of tears and upset along the route (having tried everything from being nice, bribes of chocolate smarties for each word read etc to being strict and 'just do it' - nothing made a difference).

Then he discovered that the Telegraph had rugby reports in it (dh buys it specifically for this reason!) and ds1 loves rugby. Within the space of a couple of weeks he went from very basic reading to being able to read the rugby reports in the paper, including the names of players from abroad with non phonetic spellings.

3 years on it is still a struggle to get him to read a story book - although he will listen to dh read him a bedtime story and enjoy it (things like harry potter) but if he is reading for himself it's always non-fiction (guiness book of records, deadly 60, rugby world book, minecraft, how does it work, etc etc). I can remember the first time I found him reading for himself curled up in a corner - I was just so pleased he'd found reading for pleasure (dh and I are both bookworms so always have a book to hand). I sent a note in his reading book for the teacher that I hadn't done the reading he was supposed to to with him as I'd found him reading for pleasure and didn't want to interrupt him - and the teacher wrote back that she was thrilled (she also knew of the trials and tribulations of getting him to read) and to encourage reading for pleasure at all costs

Which I guess is all a very round about way of saying OP try and find a 'real' book or article or something that your ds is really interested in and see if that makes a difference. Until ds found something he was interested in he just didn't see the point of reading as he hated the 'adventures' of Biff and Chip and friends - but a rugby match report - even though supposedly much more difficult was worth his while investing his energy in working out!