home readers too easy and unsophisticated

[madeitagain]

My child almost six is bringing home books that are simple in both vocabulary and story line. He was bringing home more complex and challenging books in reception. He doesn't particularly enjoy these 'easy' readers and becomes careless and unmotivated when reading them. I am fortunate in that I am a teacher and have access to guided reading books and can thus easily provide my child with more challenging and motivating books, generally one or two levels above the books he is reading at school.
My son's teacher is in her 3rd year of teaching, my son is happy at school and learning. His reading is improving, although I am not sure if this is because of the reading he does with me or at school.
I want to be diplomatic and convey my support for the teacher but at the same time convey my thoughts on his home readers. I am not 'a pushy parent' and would be more than happy with simple books if I thought they were of benefit to my son, Any ideas on how to approach the teacher?

The purpose is the same as with any homework to practise and apply skills they have been taught in class.

But then it doesn't make sense at all.
Teachers sometimes doesn't realize true ability of children. This is the most of the case with MN children, with very involved parents, with the child who find the books too easy.
I understand that teachers are too busy to know every detail about every child, but surely sending home easy books without any suggestion for parents(eg. work on comprehension, or vocabulary, etc.) does not help us at all. We just end up very frustrated.( And if not corrected, I would lose confidence for ability of the teacher.)

This is where we "opted out" of the school's reading scheme PA-style with both eldest and youngest. The school didn't / haven't followed it up in either case. Both love to read at home. Just not the stuff school sends home. The library books they choose should give them an indication. you'd have thought.

I am sorry for rambling, but I just find it so frustrating. When I was school age, I didn't have home work to read every day. Most of my class mates had no problem learning to read. My parents never read to me.(It's not done thing in my country.) But I turned out to be ok.

Here, every school seems to have reading homework. I was lucky. My Ds loves to read. But I hear so many cases of children refuse to read, or struggling to read. I just find it so confusing, that they put so much pressure on little children, but not achieving its goal.

I'm not sure what doesn't make sense. The child needs to develop a certain skill so it makes total sense to practise.

I don't think that sending books home to read, without proper guidance, and which might not even be appropriate level for the child is doing any good for a child. Especially if the purpose is purely to practice.

The guidance is listen to your child and talk about what they have read ... Most of the newer schemes have suggestions of the type of questions and ideas how to use the texts.

In the early stages they need to practice decoding and can't read just any old book because they don't have the phonics skills. So yes pretty much limited to scheme books but that's because they can't read anything else!

After that, it's all just books really, the skills you want to practice can be practiced just as well in non-scheme books. For us, we found the schemes a good source of books that were about the right difficulty level and engaging. I don't think they have any magical teaching power that other books don't have though, nor that other books are in some way more worthy.

Maybe it's a plus for DS school that they did use a variety of schemes (several of which were in themselves very varied), so there was no being stuck in a rut with just reading one style or one set of characters. It's true that we did move away from school books at the point when all they sent for months was Traditional Tales.

Thank you MRZ.
I was totally oblivious to most obvious!

And in the later stages they may be analysing texts or exploring authors use of techniques or many other skills that need to be taught and practised. That means the texts sent home should provide opportunities.

We don't use scheme books in KS2 but the books sent home are selected with a teaching purpose in mind.

I guess my ds's school wasn't as helpful as others.
He was allowed to choose whatever books he likes to read since summer term of reception. I wasn't given any guidance from teachers.
I wish teachers have given me advice like yours. He can read well, and comprehension is getting better, but I haven't got a clue about his other skills.