year 1 having to read book twice

[musicinspring1]

Hello. DD has just gone into year 1. She made good progress in reading in year R. She was listened to regularly in class, book changed when finished, read at home a but mostly every evening, even if for 5 minutes.

She lost momentum over the summer and I didn't push it. Started year 1 on the level she finished reception in, fine. Listened to on the first day of school, no other writing from the school since.
She reluctantly reads a couple of pages every day or so, I won't push more than that. Seeing as she doesn't seem to read at school it takes a little while to finish a book . Now her teacher is saying she won't change the book until they've read it twice. Once for encoding, once for deduction. Dd is very demoralised and bored. I ask questions as we go through the book and she understands what biff is up to!!! I've asked for a meeting with the teacher as I'm not happy but before I go, is there any merit in her 'read the book twice' theory? I've not come across it before. Thanks.

If your dd is struggling with confidence have you still got any toddler books around she could read to you. MY 3rd dd is just starting to read stories over and over with me so that she actually memorises the story but along the way also starts to decipher the words out of context. She loves stories that rhyme as they are easy to decipher. We also had a 15 minute car journey with her telling me the first letter of every word she said, so she is working on her phonics. She is a bit younger than yours so not at school yet and this is her dragging me rather than the other way around - I just wanted to give you a bit of a feel for how they are when they are enthusiastic so hopefully you and your dd can get a bit more positive about it. I agree it is one of those things where lots of little and often and variety only helps.

Why do you want to oblivate blending words. With lots of practice most year 1s learn to decode in their heads and pass the phonics check in May.

It's a shame that the OP hasn't returned to answer my question about her dd's reading ability (or is ignoring it). Before one can give any meaningful advice one really has to know what is causing the problem. A 'reluctant' reader is quite different from a 'struggling' reader (though, obviously, reluctance to read could stem from struggling to read). It is impossible to make out which category her dd falls into.

Sorry I didn't mean to ignore!! Mums net went down during the thread and I got bored of checking to see if it was working. DD is on blue level ORT.

Sorry, blue level ORT means absolutely nothing at all to me. My children never brought reading books home (1980s) and I worked with struggling readers in KS3.

I was really wanting to know what she was finding difficult (as per the teacher saying that she found a book 'tricky') and what the state of her phonic knowledge is.

The fact that the school is using ORT rather than decodable books makes me suspicious of their teaching methods

ORT blue is the old nc level 1b, absolutely fine for beginning of year 1.

If it is the old, non-decodable ORT it really isn't suitable at all for such an early stage in learning to read. However, telling me that it's OK for start of Y1 still doesn't tell me what the OP's dd is finding hard/tricky.

We abandoned biff chip books because they didn't engage DS and read random library books in the end. He is a very motivated reader now

Depends on whether it's blue level ORT as in the ones with the blue spine/dot on the spine or an ORT that is blue banded by bookbands. The latter is about 1b and is slightly above where you might expect a child to be on entry to year 1, the former is about yellow level and would be about right for entry to year 1.

If they are the old style Biff and Chip (not Floppy's phonics or songbirds), then I would imagine that the problem is likely to be that the OP's DD doesn't have anywhere near the level of phonic knowledge to allow her to tackle it ,which is putting her off. Not so much the wrong level, as the wrong reading scheme.

Maize, book bands are a relic of the old national literacy stragery. In the past book were put into band by difficulty if you were using whole word teaching methods. A blue book will have about two sentences per page of dull repeative text because children were expected to memorise words. To make matters more complicated decodable books like songbirds, dandelion readers, jelly and bean have all be categorized according according to the (whole word) book bands. A child who is a high book band on a diet of purely decodable books might struggle when presented with a very simple non decodable book because they are only using phonic strageries.

Many schools do not have enough decodable books for the entire school. My daughter's school had decodable books for reception, but not enough to allow key stage 1 children to take decodable books home.

Book banding really should be abolished! It is so inappropriate.

To complicate things further, ReallyTired there is more than one system of coloured book bands and ORT has a third colour system that pre-dates either of those.

In a move designed to confuse everyone, I think ORT have managed to print some of their books with 3 different colours.

Our school uses book bands very loosely, they are only there to make sure a child struggling with "Tim made a din on a tin" won't pick Harry Potter so dad has to read it. It seems to work.

I haven't read all other posts but reading twice promotes fluency and sight reading. As a teacher I would always encourage to read twice first for figuring out the words, second for a more fluent read. Otherwise children. End. Up. Reading. Like. This. And they don't always get how to read with fluency

Expecting fluency at the start of year 1 is unrealistic. Blending takes a lot of practice. If children read lots of repeatitive text then they will memorise the word instead of blend. No, a child will not read s-a-m s-a-t a p-i-n. For the rest of their life. They will learn to decode words really fast in their heads. They will also learn how to spell better.

I agree with Maize that book bands are not appropriate for synthetic phonics teaching. Maybe books need to be re graded according to decoding difficulty. However I think the book band system works well once a child is at the stage of learning comprehension skills rather than decoding.

I'd agree with that ,ReallyTired.

I wouldn't really be bothered about fluency at this stage, provided the basis were there. The only reason I might make a child read a book twice was if I was worried that their comprehension of the text was an issue in some way.

I don't think I would have a blanket policy of making all children read every book twice. And if I thought it was putting a child off I wouldn't do it, I'd find a different way. It does sound as though this teacher would be quite happy to do that though, rather than one that has a strict set of rules and won't bend them for anyone.

Lots of interesting messages, thanks for your responses. I'll have a proper read tonight when children are in bed and respond more then.