Y2 dd getting fed up with school books

[workJack]

Dd has always spent 10/ 15 minutes each morning reading to me before school and enjoyed it. But the last few weeks she has finally started reading her own books for pleasure so reads when she wakes up and before she goes to bed. She is now really reluctant to read the school books as they don't really interest her.

Has anyone any advice on whether I should push her to read the school books? She is on brown level so a good reader. Thanks

NO! Don't push her to read things she doesn't particularly want to read; that won't really achieve much, other than annoy her!

If she can make a 'token gesture' of reading some of her school books at sometime, during the allocated time for them (a week?) and you (or she) can write appropriate comments in her home book/reading diary perhaps the teacher will let her choose more stimulating books.

Is she still on a 'reading scheme'? If she is, maybe at your next parent/teacher meeting, try to get her on to being a 'free reader' (if the school uses that title).

The evidence shows that reading for pleasure is a better basis for future success than anything else, and certainly than book bands.

That said, she can't get to the interesting book bands until she proves her capability with the lower levels. From experience, that's the way to pitch it - five minutes of book band book to buy an hour of uninterrupted library book, for example.

Have you talked to the teacher about it?

As a teacher, I do want children on the lower book bands to read books as the right level as that is how their reading will progress - although it's important that parents still read to them eg by reading a book that they would love sharing, but is beyond their reading ability. However, I'm very relaxed about what the more able children choose to read.

Once my own daughter could read fluently, the struggle was to get her to read for pleasure (she still loved being read to, but reading for herself seemed a bit of a chore) so I was relieved whenever she found something that she enjoyed and let her read whatever she wanted.

I'd speak to the teacher - see if you can get her away from the reading scheme books.
I've just done that myself; sometimes my DS would get a nice book that he'd enjoy reading, other times I felt like I had to whip him to read it and I really didn't like forcing him. His teacher agreed he could now choose books from the library, and he's much happier for it. He will even pick up his school reading books when he wakes up and read them by himself for a bit, as he gets so engrossed in the story!

Thank you, I will speak to her teacher. She is a very able reader (top group) so I can't see why she can't read what she wants.

workJack:

It's very hard to suggest what next without knowing how strong a reader your DD is.

I'm just a parent, but I think the question I'd be interested to ask is what does the teacher think about your DD's reading out loud skills - is it full of expression? Is it fluent? Would she benefit from you and your DD discussing things like what might happen next in the story, which character she likes/ dislikes, meanings of words, etc....?

This is a really tricky stage and both DDs (although with DD1 it was late Y3/ early Y4 because she was a struggling reader, especially when reading out loud) - but our solution was to share nightly reading. We didn't ignore the school guided reading selections, but maybe gave them 2/3 nights attention out of the 7 and the rest of the time we read things totally off the school plan.

So we would each read a page of Charlotte's Web, Paddington, Charlie and the chocolate factory, etc... basically old favourites so Mum & Dad could relive their childhood! For DD1 at this age - a lot of this was too much to ask - so I would select a short, easy to read paragraph or maybe have her try a difficult sentence, but would do the bulk of the reading myself. Gradually over time, the balance shifted, but I found that if I was reading to them a bit more than they were reading to me - they felt they were on to a good thing, they enjoyed this quiet time after bath & before bed and I enjoyed sharing some of my favourite stories with them.

HTH

PS listening to someone read a book is also important - I think it gives you an appreciation for English - it's rhythms, forms of expression, joy in puns, etc.... we tackled this in two ways - tv shows (CBeebies Bedtime stories/ specials like the Gruffalo at Christmas/ Jackanory/ Bookaboo (I'm a bit out of date so some of these may no longer be running) - and CDs of chidlren's stories. The Harry Potter books read by Stephen Fry for instance are brilliant on long journeys.

Nah, don't worry. I'm a teacher and my son doesn't like the scheme books, so we don't read them. Especially as your daughter is reading/being read to. If you want to let the teacher know she is reading then write down her own books in the reading journal.

When I was in (what was then) J1 - bottom juniors? What's it called now? - I was given permission to go and choose my reading books from the J4 (top juniors) bookshelf - it was very slightly embarrassing at the time but well worth it as I enjoyed the more challenging books much more and I've been an avid reader ever since. I don't know anything about reading schemes etc but I'd say do let her read something she is interested in

I would try to find out what the reason being it is. If the books are too easy or just not the topics she likes?

I think it is important to read other books, not only what you choose for yourself. I also think a variety of styles, like poems, factual books and fiction is good as it broadens the mind and prepares for reading books in school or research for school topics.

I saw the school books as part of homework. Necessary to do but I kept it to a minimum if DD really didn't like it. The teacher stressed that she didn't want reading to become a chore but that sometimes you have the patience to read on and see if a books gets better instead of giving up. She recommended reading around 1/4 of a chapter book at least and then saying the reason behind not finishing it.

This helps DD now to finish a book or at least carry on if she gets one she doesn't immediately like.

I agree with noramum - sometimes you do need to read books you don't like...

I also think that the school reading book scheme is about an awful lot more than just reading- they introduce all the different grammar constructs, increase sentence sizes and vocabulary etc in a more structured way, so we used to treat them as "homework" and my DDs additionally read what they wanted for pleasure - and still do aged 12 and 14.

Tbh I had the same issue with dd when she was about the same age. I spoke to the teacher who quite frankly was so rigid in her interpretation of what dc should be reading that I decided to tell dd to read what she likes at home but when in school read what the teacher asks you to read. because dd was not reading the school books I stopped filling in her reading record. The teacher was not happy and kept putting sniffy comments in the book about how important it was for dd to read the right books. The fact the right books did not interest her was beside the point.

Thank you. I think one of the issues is that when he reads at school, it's only a couple of pages at a time so he never really gets into the story.
I really agree that he needs to try reading different books so will definitely keep that in mind.