Reception reading levels ( sorry! )

[foreverton]

Hi, my dd is in a full class of 30 which is very unusual for our school.
She's bright and according to school is in "top set" though actually done by colours.

After a big age gap of having ds at the school I'm finding it hard to remember how it worked when he was there but dd has had 56 pink sticker books since September.
We read at home and she is a natural learner, wants to play school at home, wants to do phonics etc.

School very unapproachable, mentioned to teacher and was told we could talk about it at parents evening- a few months away!

I believe that there will be a huge variation in reception reading levels but know that dd can read more challenging books than the ones she's given. Nobody talks in playground so not aware of other children's levels, not that it matters anyway.
How would you approach this?
Don't want to come across pushy etc but nearly 5 months in and no change.
Thanks for reading

Do have to say, reading..decoding the words, learning the letter blends etc, are one thing...but most schools ask the children questions about what they have read too. It's no good a child being able to read the words if they don't fully understand what they mean

That's not in line with the current curriculum which states that children should be given books which match their current decoding level, with comprehension taught at the level they are reading at.

That's not in line with the current curriculum which states that children should be given books which match their current decoding level, with comprehension taught at the level they are reading at.

How does that work then?

Surely comprehension is quite unlikely to be equal to the level of decoding - when someone can only decode CAT, they can certainly comprehend a lot more complicated stories, they're vocabulary is going to be much larger.

With DD completely bored by the level of books she's on, because they are so basic with no complex plots and simplistic language, there's no comprehension to work on in those books.

fred, if she can read the book fluently and can comprehend fully, surely your dd is on the wrong level?

But then the level above will have graphemes she simply hasn't learnt about and couldn't recognise for that reason - hence my point about decoding level being different to comprehension level.

Can't you speak to the teacher and ask what you've said on here?
Do all the children have to learn the same thing at same time?
Can't you teach her yourself so she can move on?
My ds learned to read without phonics, so I haven't got a clue how that works in school. (He learned phonics after he was already a fluent reader.)

irvine101 Sure, there's lots of routes to helping DD, but my question was the general case of how comprehension and decoding are different and only somewhat related skills and as such I can't see how you can have books which are in lock step with the two.

Fred- it's frustrating isn't it!
Comprehension of books that say very little needs a bit of imagination to say the least :) I ask so many stupid questions to make sure she's got the "story" as that's what her teacher pushes at school and she can spell/read/decode CVC words and most "tricky words"
We're doing lots of spellings at home of 3/4 letter words and using a mini white board and making random sentences for her to read. There's only so much we can do and I don't want to put her off reading altogether at 4.

Fred, my ds was completely opposite, he was good decoder but hopeless with comprehension. We had to work quite hard to fill the gaps.
I think those early books are more inclined to teach decoding rather than comprehension?
I don't think even higher level books are interesting(except non fiction), we completely separated books to read aloud, and something to work on comprehension.

Can I suggest the Oxford owl website. They have loads of ebooks at various levels.
It doesn't solve the school issue but at least gives you a chance to share with teacher that she can read more.
My dd is a bugger for remembering word for word & we only get 2 books per week from the school.
For comparison purposes dd does phonics daily & guided reading 1 x per week.
She didn't start bringing books home until after Christmas & is bringing home yellow band books. It's a mixture of songbirds, jolly phonics & another scheme so far.
From the newsletter (don't drop off/pick up) - different groups are working at different levels & starting books at different times. Groups seem to be fairly fluid - suggesting regular assessment

I didn't explain very well - what I meant was that schools need to make sure children are given books which match their current decoding level - they should not be holding children back because of a perceived lack of comprehension. As someone (irvine?) pointed out, the difference in comprehension between early reading levels is pretty miniscule.

This is what the NC says for Year 1:

This will be supported by practice in reading books consistent with
their developing phonic knowledge and skill and their knowledge of common exception words. At the same time they will need to hear, share and discuss a wide range of high-quality books to develop a love of reading and broaden their vocabulary.

Thanks Feenie makes sense, is there much reason other than boredom of the reading books - which is fine when there's plenty of other reading she enjoys - to be concerned that they're easy to decode

Does anyone know how the Soundstart reading scheme corresponds with ORT? it doesn't have numerical levels and the banded colours seem to be different.