How can I make Ds's teachers understand he can read?

[mrsvilliers]

So ds started YR last January and basically taught himself to read in a week or so. Once I realised I then spent a lot of time trying to tell this to his teachers. He ended YR on Orange level, by which point I'd given up with his teachers. He spent the summer reading Horrid Henry, Dirty Bertie and train books written for adults. He even gave The Railway Children a go but that was too hard for him. Assessed at school this week, still at orange and sent home with a book he had zero problems reading. Arrgghh. How do I tell the teacher?

And yes, I do realise this is a nice problem to have and I can give him plenty of material at home to read but I want him to feel challenged by school too. Is that wrong?

"The "reading with expression" is something the teachers used to go about a lot. It annoyed me, because DD has ASD and always speaks in a flat monotone voice. It doesn't mean she can't read or understand!"

Yes, I think it's reasonable to assume a child who reads in complete monotone does not understand. The only children I have met who speak in a complete monotone are profoundly deaf children.

You can teach her when to breathe. Ask her to do an impression of snow angry voice. Ask her to whisper something. Make it into a game. There are lots of words a writer will use instead of "said". Learning what an angry or a sad voice sounds like is a good life skill and would help your daughter.

Why are you desperate to batter through the levels? Orange books start to get a bit more interesting. I expect your son would learn more about the world reading these books

I'm not! But for the fact that what he is reading and comprehending at home is way above this!! Anyway I think I've solved the mystery - spoke to him last night and he said he didn't know all the words in green level 'Cat's Last Act' which so sound so implausible the only thing I can think is that he's bored and zoning out during the assessment then answering 'don't know' instead of saying he's lost his place.

He does read with expression and pause appropriately, the only thing he is guilty of is dropping words through reading too quickly.

Regarding the 'why are you so keen to go up the levels' and 'there is much to learn from lower level books' points - be it learning about the world, or stuff like expression:

When DS was on lower levels, we found the non-fiction books very often to be extremely superficial and way too short to be able to learn something about the world from them (with a few exceptions). It was only at perhaps gold level that every other non-fiction book started to be interesting. But as our school has a policy of having to read every book in a level before being moved up, with 50-60 books on each level, if we ever wanted to go beyond them, we had to plough through them. Stealing valuable time in which we could have read a decent book about the same topic. So in fact, those non-fiction books PREVENTED DS from 'learning about the world'.

'The point of learning to read is so you can read books and accumulate knowledge/insights/pleasure.'

And that is exactly why I hated DS being stuck on books that did not provide knowledge, nor insights, nor pleasure, when he would have been capable to read books that do. That is why some people are keen to move up the levels - so that their children can experience reading as a pleasurable, interesting activity rather than as a boring chore that has to be done for the sake of school.

Yes of course you can provide your own books, but the school books, when they are at the completely wrong level, can actively put a child off reading, and you may find they are no longer interested in those books you provide at home. Because they may have learned that reading is dull.

A PP was finding it unlikely that a school would cap Y1 books at orange. Well in our school the current Y1 kids are ALL on red or yellow and none of them will progress beyond orange this school year. Because that is the new plan, they want to keep all the children together on similar bands, no matter what their actual abilities are. (I'm still hoping they will review and adapt that plan, poor kids! In some ways I hope OFSTED decides to turn up, but I doubt they will.)

What worked with my ds was to ask detailed question rather than general question.
So if the teacher asked what he thought of the story or what he liked about story, his answer was always "don't know". But if she asked what happened when X did Y, or why did Z is do that etc, he can answer correctly and speak his opinion clearly in detail. The teacher was really glad to figure out how to deal with my ds's laziness.

Skipping/dropping words are my ds's problem as well. So even though he is yr4 and a lot of others have dropped reading aloud, we still do it daily.
I am constantly telling him to slow down. (I make the gesture to suggest slowing down, rather than saying it while he is reading.)

I find it unlikely that any school would arbitarily cap a child's reading level. The reading comprehension test at the end of year 2 is hard. Teachers are expected to show progress.

An orange book is so short I am sceptical it cuts into reading time. Honestly if your child was half as able as you claim the book would be read in 2 to 5 minutes flat. My daughter at that age enjoyed blue songbird books even though they were far to easy. She enjoyed the rhyming patterns and it helped her phonics no end.

RT not sure if that is addressed to me, but anyhow.

Our school is very pleased when children read better, and encourage progress, and do teach them. They just want to keep them on lower home reading books. My DS is now in Y2, and last year they were a bit more flexible in Y1 than they are now, but still we were told explicitly that whereas he'd be able to read higher level books, they didn't want him to, for the sole reason that those other books were meant for Y2 and if he'd read them in Y1 already, he'd run out of age-appropriate reading material.

My DS enjoyed the Songbirds books too and never did mind the Biff Chip and Kipper books, although I did (they insidiously encourage guessing, especially up to orange level). At that time his books were pretty well matched to his abilities. In Y1 DS had a couple of big cognitive leaps and his reading developed very rapidly, but school books didn't change, and it was then that they became boring and a chore. Reading turquoise, purple, gold books - they are just long enough to be able to bore you. DS was not yet reading for pleasure at home, and with those books he was never going to. Being unwilling, a book that could be read in 10 minutes would take him 20 at least, and then he much preferred to go run about or play with his Lego or have me read him something, rather than pick up another book. 20 minutes 5x/week does add up.

Now that he is reading voraciously for pleasure at home, books of his own choosing, the mismatch between ability and school reading books no longer matters much. He'll whizz through his now white books in a few minutes and then go on to read something else. We use the school books for practising all the skills involved in reading out loud, and that's fine. The stories so far have been ok too. If I read out the blurb, DS will happily sit down to discover what it is all about.

I think the point where mis-matched books are a problem is mainly where a child has the ability to read but doesn't like to, is reluctant. At that point IMO it can be detrimental to make them read things they find boring every day. It certainly won't encourage their love for reading, even if they do whizz through the books in minutes.

I listen to readers and the expressionless reading is very common, monotone not bringing the story to life. Makes listener bored.

ReallyTired he reads them happily but in 2 - 5 mins flat as you suggested. Anyway I spoke to his teacher this morning and just after I'd said 'he's on Orange level' as a sort of introduction she said 'oh he's waaay above that' turns out orange was the highest band she'd brought in for testing and she just put him on that with the plan to test him again later this week. So mystery ACTUALLY solved! Thanks everyone for your input.

That's great news, mrsvilliers!

I'm going to try to have a word with DD's teacher today, and am hoping I get a similar response, although I have a bad feeling about it for some reason!

Reallytired thanks for your advice, but DD is past the age of reading books now thank goodness. She never did crack the "reading with expression" thing but it doesn't seem to have affected her ability to read or understand in any way.

You could be talking about my youngest. When he started in Foundation, he had taught himself to read, and he was put on something like 5 levels higher than the children around him. But they were reluctant to put him any higher because of his young age, they felt it wouldn't be appropriate, which I agree with. He just avidly read books at home.He was allowed to be a 'free reader' towards the end of year 2.( He's in sixth form now, and got A*for English language and literature).

Now, as a teaching assistant in year 2 (in the same school), I can say that there seems to be some sort of race amongst parents to see how many books their children can get through...but the emphasis should be on understanding what they are reading, not just the ability to read the words. So often the so called 'good readers' just don't have a deeper understanding of what they are reading, and this is such a big requirement in the SAts .
Also, reading with expression is a good indicator that the children understand the text, and are following the punctuation or adding appropriate voices with speech.

I'd just forget about the school reading books. Take him to the library and let him pick books for himself.

neolara we do do this and dh actually suggested not mentioning it to school as he has plenty of reading material at home. However I think it's important he feels challenged in school too and not that he can breeze through everything without trying. Anyway he's been bumped up a few levels now so we'll see how we go.

Hope the chat works out for you too Ginmummy!

Glad all went well OP.

For those who raised it, I like to encourage my guided readers to read with expression because it often shows understanding of characterisation, creation of atmosphere and so on. It's a great way of improving writing and practising those speaking and listening skills too.

It's not all about the book bands.

Thanks, mrsvilliers - all's well here too. The teacher said it was a mistake, asked DD to bring the book back today and the teacher would send her to Y3 to choose another from the appropriate box. Phew!

I think this thing about 'reading with expression' is interesting. I learned to read way back in the Dark Ages of the 1950s when you weren't sent home with 'scheme' or 'banded' books, though you read them in school.

I have no doubt that many of my contemporaries experienced some difficulties because of this (though people in my age group have been found to have better literacy levels than youngsters) but when I went to Grammar school, where lots of books and plays were covered by 'round robin' reading in class, many of my peers didn't read with 'expression' at all. This in no way affected their understanding of what they were reading.

Teaching a child to read with expression is not that hard once they have a good grounding in phonics. Knowing when to breathe means that the child does not take a break in the middle of a clause and lose sense of the meaning. Taking a small pause gives the child time to think. It also makes reading more fun and brings the book to life.

My Dd's school had some sort of rule about those Oxford reading tree books. All books have to be read before moving up a level. DD1 by age 7 was reading Enid blyton, Ronald Dahl etc. And could tell you all about the story.
Spoke to school who said she had to read all biff, chip etc. So was coming home with books with 1 line sentences on each page. So we didn't read them, i used to write in her reading diary what we had written.
When the school got a new headteacher Dd was put into the accelerated reader programme and by age 10 was put in the independent reader plan so didn't get reading books home. She could choose what to read at school during reading times. She also used to spend time in the nursery and P1 reading to the younger ones.

Op, speak to the teacher again and if you feel there is no justification to helping your child on the early band books then mark in the reading book what he has been reading instead.

Op it seems to me schools cannot handle advanced readers.

"Op it seems to me schools cannot handle advanced readers."

That is bullshit. If a school held back advanced readers in the way described by some mumsnet posters then the school would find itself in special measures.

We never get to hear the school's point of view on posts like these. The reality is that maybe a child is stuck on a particular reading band for a reason. It's worth asking your teacher what you can do to help your child progress if they have been on a particular reading band for a long time.

Reallytired, sometimes when people ask the teacher the answer is "they can't go beyond level X in year y" or "they have to read every book in every level" or "they need to have something left to read next year". There have been enough people say this (including some RL friends ) that I doubt they're making it up. To be fair I've also read a lot of ofsted reports that say the most able children aren't challenged enough.

And some schools rest on an ancient 'outstanding' Ofsted and haven't been inspected for nigh on a decade. I'm pretty certain ours would have a hard time if Ofsted came knocking. But as long as the KS2 results are right, they don't seem to be interested. (And I'd hazard a guess that the school's KS2 results are not solely down to the school's teaching. I wonder just how many children are heavily tutored.)

We may not get to hear the school's view, but more often than not we do get to hear what the school says to the parents when parents go to inquire. If that is not the true reason, then I wonder why they say these things?

DD is now 12 and was always an advanced reader
my experience of infant school reading is not to race through the book levels but to go for breadth of books. So extend horizontally to poetry, non fiction, try some child versions of classics. Don't just race to get to harder and harder books, you want to foster their love of reading rather than just show how good their reading is iykwim. (not saying you are doing this, but it is easy to get caught up in reading progress and actually if your ds is already a good reader you don't need to worry!) You'll also find that YR and y1 is all about the reading - once you get to y2,y3 everyone (well pretty much) will be fluent readers.