Alternative books for gold level

[ilovetosleep]

DS is doing really well with his reading. He's 5.5 (summer born year 1) and just moved up to gold.
Until now its been all biff and chip and other colourful reading scheme books which he has enjoyed (me not so much!) but the gold box at school seems very short on interesting books but more importantly, age appropriate. Lots of true stories with photographs rather than illustrations, subjects eg the slave trade, victorian times etc which he's just not that into. Or some really old and uninspiring reading scheme books aimed. They seem aimed at slightly older kids. Reading has for the first time become a bit of a chore and we seem to have got out of the habit of reading every day.

He's funny about reading large format picture books as he still likes me to read those to him and his little bro. Associates them with bedtime cuddles I guess. He likes me reading chapter books to him too - Faraway tree, Roald dahl, Pippi Longstocking - and some chapter books with fewer words per page, he'll read a bit, I'll do a bit eg. 13 Storey Tree house. But he isn't ready to read a chapter book himself. He doesn't really have the stamina, and he gets tired quickly. He just loves being read to and the earlier reading scheme books were different enough in format for him to feel they were 'his' books. He would probably manage the chapter books if they were illustrated and with larger print. He does have great comprehension but still I find a lot of the next step books a little bit over his head, especially if they don't have pictures.

So far we have had success with the Claude books and he has read all of the 1st pack of Project X Alien books. I have the second pack waiting but I'd like some other ideas before starting those (he got obsessed with the first pack and its all we did for about a fortnight, and I have other DC at home for the hols so not ideal!)

Am I missing anything? Shortish, illustrated, appropriate for his age.

Thanks in advance

DS2 is also in Year 1 and on gold level. We have a reading chest subscription. They have sent us lots of Oxford Reading Tree Treetops books which have been brilliant.
They are little chapter books with colour pictures throughout.

We also have some puffin early readers which are a similar level.

I went through the 'must have coloured pictures on each page' stage with both dds. From what I remember the Early Readers (The Topsy Turvies was a favourite) were good, and also the Ahlberg Happy Families series. Once they were prepared to accept books with black and white pictures on each page then things like Mammoth Academy, The Worst Witch worked.

I would try and use the library or buy secondhand as much as possible, IME this stage doesn't last very long at all (a couple of months).

Yes the Walker stories are all three chapters and have black and white pictures in. my son reads one book to me.then reads two or three of the books to himself. he is really devouring the set, I highly recommend them. good variety of stories

"Re phonics, someone upthread said they should have covered all phonics by orange level - not sure how this can be true when they are still learning phonics in yrs 2,3 etc? "

The National Curriculum states that reading books should reflect the child's phonics knowledge and skills (as they are meant to reinforce what the child has been taught).
Phonics doesn't match book bands as the book banding system is based on multi cueing methods as is "benchmarking" ( someone mentioned ) phonic schemes such as Songbirds published by ORT end at Orange band so in theory all alternative spellings for the sounds should have been taught by that stage if the school is matching teaching to needs.

We teach phonics in every year group up to Y6 however by Y2/3 the focus is firmly on phonics for spelling for most children.

mrz, is it quite normal that for a yr 1 kid who has (I can only assume til I ask teacher after the hols) covered all alternative sounds, and could do last years phonics screening easily with no mistakes, to still struggle with very long words that they have not ever encountered? Is it just a case of practise or something I should be concerned about?

It depends what you mean by longer words but my guess without knowing the child or school is that they haven't been taught how to decode polysyllabic words. Schools often assume that a child who can decode simple words will automatically be able to transfer this to longer words but without a strategy many children simply freeze when faced with "big" words.

It might be that they haven't got that far yet? I hope so. Otherwise much longer words would be in the phonics screening? He does know to break down words into parts, but I think laziness stops him doing that when he is mid flow and so he does try to guess. He doesn't want to interrupt the flow but obviously not knowing the word and having me interrupt him does just that! He came across interrogation with DH the other day and he totally guessed it, can't remember what he said, something like interruption but because he was reading something that went totally over his head anyway (newspaper article or packaging or something) he didn't realise it was the wrong word and think to break it down. I then interrupted and asked him to break it down, and he could.

When should they know the difference between the different spellings for sounds? Example - we just came across the word devouring. He said Dev-our-ing straight off (a bit like Dev-are-ing) and carried on without stopping. He does know what devouring means, (I asked him) he must have heard it loads of times but he's tired and just wanted to hear the rest of the monster scene. I had to stop him and make him go back to say it properly. This is just laziness right? We also just read 'puny'. He doesn't know what it means and said 'p-un-y' which is to me an understandable mistake. If they don't know the meaning of the word When should they be able to tell which 'u' sound it should be?

And I'm guessing that if he's making the above mistakes he shouldn't be reading gold level? TBH we haven't had these problems in the school reading books as he hasn't really come across anything in them that causes him to make those kind of mistakes, maybe just fluke

The hurrying through and guessing rather than slowing down to sound out thing is familiar from DC here too around early chapter book stage. I think they can get a bit too used to being able to just scan and say, particularly when they're finding all the school books very easy. Don't fret I reckon; as you say, he could sound it out when you stopped him and reminded him to. I don't think it's particularly about being at the wrong level, we kept calling DC on it and they soon got to the stage where they could scan and say long words too.

DD now does the sounding out feasibly but wrong and carrying on thing from time to time - I'd just say good try, tell her the correct alternative, and ask her if she knows what it means - often that means it is a word she didn't know or didn't remember.

Puny - my two would know the single/double consonant rule, but not sure if they were taught it in school ever or it's just come from reading lots. And obviously it is only a rule of thumb so won't always work.

I think you should remember that the Phonics Screening Check isn't a test of reading ability it's purpose is to identify those children who are at risk of future reading difficulties (it's based on the type of assessment used by Ed Psychs).
The check starts with basic single syllable words and progresses to two syllable words but this doesn't in anyway reflect what should be taught in class.

I'm not sure I know the single/double constonant rule - if I did I'd be able to explain puny to him - what is the rule?! It might be something he does know, I just have no idea what he does and doesn't know!

Puny is four sounds /p/ /ue / /n/ /ee/ /p/ spelt p /ue/ spelt u /n/ spelt n /ee/ spelt y if the word isn't in your child's vocabulary they will be unlikely to know that the u spelling is /ue/ rather than /u/(as in pun).
Children need to be explicitly taught that one spelling can be different sounds and to try the alternatives.

First rule is there aren't any rules

As mrz says, there are no absolute rules, just rules of thumb, most likely correspondences in particular situations. An experienced reader would guess puny rather than punny.

The single-double consonant one is demonstrated by the above really. If you have vcv within a word, then if the consonant sound is spelled with a single letter it's most likely the long vowel sound, if it's a double letter it's mostly short. Planing/planning, matted/mated, hoping/hopping, diner/dinner, pinny/piny.

Of course there are lots of exceptions, like limit.

Another example is c before an e or i is most likely a soft c.

I have no idea how or whether this stuff is taught. In my day we just picked it up by reading lots.

Which I guess Is why it's recommended for him to read out loud to me for a lot longer, so I can correct and comment on these things. I didn't learn to read with phonics so I don't know any of the rules, although I do have absolute faith in phonics being the best way to learn. I'm pretty sure DS is getting taught it well, as he can figure most words out, it's just that he needs reminding and prodding to try alternative sounds/spellings before getting it 100%. I think he is resistant as he wants to get on with the story.

Back to the main point of the thread, he's pretty much taken over the reading of 13 storey tree house (out loud) but he likes me to read the odd few pages here and there when he gets tired. Next up we have a colour illustrated short secret seven book from the library, and an illustrated Julia Donaldson early reader Mr birdhouse something or other. Hopefully they'll go down well.

Ilovetosleep those aren't phonic rules.

What do you mean, which part of my post are you referring to?

"I didn't learn to read with phonics so I don't know any of the rules," this

Not sure what you mean either mrz. You don't give students any clues about which correspondence to try first in particular situations? Or you're objecting to my use of the term "rule of thumb" for such things? If the latter i didn't mean anything technical by it, just a layperson's description.

You mean there aren't any rules? Ok, but I despite being an excellent reader I don't know things like why certain spellings make certain sounds. I just know it.

In phonics you learn

Written language is a visual representation of spoken language and letters are spellings for sounds

A spelling can contain one, two, three or four letters - s a t - f I sh - l igh t - w eigh t ( all 3 sound words)

There is more than one way to spell most sounds e.g.: apron - rain - day - great - tale -eight - veil - they - ballet - straight - sundae - gauge

One spelling can represent a number of sounds e.g.: great - meat - head

We teach the 44 Sounds of English ( varies slightly depending on accent ) and the 180ish common ways they can be represented in English starting with the most simple one to one representations

How to segment words into sounds ( for spelling)
How to blend sounds together (for reading)
How to manipulate sounds in words ( what you would do if you tried /u/ in puny and realised it was wrong so tried /ue/ to arrive at the correct word)

"You don't give students any clues about which correspondence to try first" we'd teach to try the most common first so if the word was meat the child would try /ee/ rather than /ae/

but in your example of c representing /s/ we'd first teach the /k/ representation in reception then in Y1 teach the alternative spellings for the sound /s/ including the spelling ( sit, hiss, scissors, cymbal, castle, house, ice, [flaccid psychology reminisce] )

Once both sounds have been taught we would investigate lots of words containing the spelling c into words where it represents the sound /k/ and words where it is the sound /s/ then look at the two lists. The children usually notice that the c in the words in the /s/ list are usually followed by the letter i or e or y if they don't we draw their attention to this.