high phonics group, low reading band

[Micksy]

Reading the book band thread on here has got me thinking.
My reception dd entered school reading a little. After the first half term, she started doing phonics with year 1. In the new year she'll be moving up with the year 2s. The school uses RWI.
However for books she's brought home a mixture of red and yellow with no pattern. She's also brought home books she's already had. The last two weeks I played ping pong, sending back two books which were already in her reading log, which then got sent back to me. We've had no new books for two weeks although I realise its a very busy time.
My main problem is she was reading the songbird collection, but now only wants to read the books school send her. They seem mostly like crappy old biff and chip to me, with a fair amount of repetition and what I presume are look and say words for the level of the book.
Could it just be a case that some schools take things slowly for the first term? Or should I be concerned?

Have you seen any of the excellent phonic books available (such as the Songbirds series) masha?

songbirds only go up to Orange though dont they?

I should imagine that books restricted to words children had learned to recognise on sight woukd have an even more restrictive vocabulary and therefore be highly limited and dull.

Books which use correspondences (phonics) or whole words (sight/mixed methods) that the pupil has not encountered before are going to be inevitable. The difference is that in a phonics approach it can extend the code learning. In sight/mixed methids, it's just more rote learning and print to bark back.

Yes that's right tobysmum.

AuntieStella, you are not wrong. I assume you are not familiar with the great cannon of pink level children's literature Which includes timeless classics such as Floppy, Floppy (oh floppy, no floppy, oh floppy, no floppy, oh no floppy) and a not insignificant number of books containing only the word 'and' or 'the' and a noun. Or there's the book that is still remembered in this house as 'the look book'. A short but riveting tale involving only the use of the word 'look' on each of its pages and its equally compelling sequel 'Look Here'. Give me 'Sid Did It' any day.

Songbirds and other schemes only go up to orange because by that stage they have taught all of the 180 or so correspondences needed so that books from all schemes are decodeable.

I'd say songbirds covers the basic phonics code and a good number of alternative vowel sounds. Wouldn't say it covers all phonics code they'll ever need. I've certainly had to teach more code since DS finished them. I reckon there's scope for a level 7 if JD ever fancied it! I like this summary:
fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/oxed/primary/literacy/ort/primary_ort_songbirds_structurechart.pdf?region=uk

I'd also note that in terms of story complexity, number of words on the page etc, Level 6 Songbirds are quite a lot easier than most Orange level books we had from school.

I used Songbirds because you had mentioned them previously and they are very affordable but they wouldn't be my first choice for a school scheme (great to supplement other more compressive schemes).

The book banding system doesn't match with phonic teaching methods so it's difficult to compare with Look & Say schemes unfortunately OUP thought it easier to use colour banding.
My main problem with Songbirds is that there are only six books in the higher bands with a single book dedicated to each sound or in some cases a single book for more than one sound ... Nit enough practice for the mire complete code IMHO

This is interesting as I have a child who has a decent phonic ability (although is not doing phonics with the year above) who can decode just about anything, but has made very, very slow progress through the book bands.

Comprehension is excellent, vocabulary seems to be above average, but memory for whole words is fairly poor. Is this what people mean when they say reading hasn't yet clicked? Are they referring to remembering words rather than having to sound them out every time?

Agree mrz, you couldn't use songbirds on their own even to level 6/orange, there just aren't enough of them. DS school use them alongside floppy phonics and a variety of other series.

Bernice, we had a "click" moment where DS went from sounding out almost everything to sounding out only the odd word, between reading levels 2 and 3. I think it would be hard for them to comprehend the longer sentences and storylines at higher levels at the speed of sounding out lots of words.

Otoh DS is currently a long way behind in reading levels compared to what he can read fluently and comprehend and enjoy at home because one of the criteria for his teacher to move him up is being able to answer inference questions. He's able to read and understand the storyline, but not yet thinking about the books at the deeper level they want him to. I think we may be waiting for another click.

books aren't all decodable after Orange. there are words i can't accurately decode

Can't be more than a handful though, and most of those aren't going to be appearing in Turquoise-lime banded books. Many of the publishers that have phonic schemes alongside non-phonic ones (ORT, Collins,Rugby/Pearson) have designed the schemes so that once children have reached the end of the phonics ones they switch to equivalent stage of the non phonic one. Mostly with the assumption that by that point they will be able to sound out most new words they come across.

I'm not convinced many of them have accurately banded their phonics books though. It does seem a bit hit and miss, but that has always been a problem with book bands IMO.

By Orange a child should know all the alternative representations for the sounds in English so should be able to decode any word they encounter. The only limit will be their vocabulary ... they may not know the meaning of the words they can decode.

Can check the books later but Songbirds doesn't I think cover e.g. -ough spellings or ti as in -tion, or some of the more obscure vowel spellings.

From memory Šongbirds cover oa, ow, oe, o and o-e spellings for the sound /oa/ and ow, ou for the sound /ou/ only and definitely doesn't teach the ti spelling for /sh/ but other schemes do.