Book band confusion

[Bookbandconfusion]

Nc'ed just in case.

My ks1 child was moved down 2 book bands when they started back at school in September. I didn't mind at first as I thought perhaps the teachers were settling the children in gently. But my child is still on this lower book band.
My child has been on the higher book band since early July, which presumably was fine with her previous teacher, as she was aware of the books we took home and never said my child shouldn't be reading them (children and parents picked the books last year, teachers pick the books this year).

My child reads almost every day in term time and read roughly 4x a week in the summer holidays, so they have had plenty of practice of the higher level books.
They are not word perfect at the higher level but seem to have a good understanding of what's going on and are using their phonics knowledge to decode unfamiliar words. My child will complete one of these books over 2 or 3 nights.
My child speeds through the lower level books, reading them very quickly in one sitting. They rarely get a word wrong. There doesn't seem to be any challenge with the lower level books. School want them to read these books twice to ensure their comprehension but my child is pretty unimpressed at the thought of having to read them again.

I tried to speak to the teacher about this at drop off but I was asking about something else too and I think she maybe misheard or misunderstood what I meant as we were both in a rush and I thought she had agreed to send higher level books but she obviously hadn't as lower level ones keep coming home.

We have put notes in my child's reading diary explicitly asking for higher level books but these have been ignored.

We will be asking for a formal meeting to discuss now.

My question really is why might this teacher want to keep my child on the lower level?

From the reading diary it seems they are only listening to my child read 3 pages of the lower level books once a week and it does worry me that maybe they are not spending enough time with my child to recognise properly where my child is at and are not providing sufficient stretch. But maybe there is a better reason why they are keeping my child at the lower level? Any thoughts welcome.

At home we now read the school book and then read higher level books from the library for the rest of the week. My child seems happy enough reading the higher level books. They have been reading them for 3 months now with no major issues so I just don't understand why school is so intent on sticking with lower level books?

Also, please feel free to tell me to give my head a wobble and none of this really matters anyway...

Apologies for paragraphing fail...

OMG. The stressing I used to do about book bands.

Your child will learn to read and will hopefully eventually read books for fun.

That is all you need to know.

hopeishere I couldn’t agree more. I have been the same but have given up now in ks2. We read whatever book he comes home with, make sure he understands the meaning of any new words and then he spends the rest of the week reading for pleasure. He couldn’t read when he started school and now he reads very well so school are definitely doing something right. I wouldn’t make him read a boring school book more than once though.

It has been illuminating moving schools.
Old school, to my mind, kept the kids back on book bands. DS2 finished year 3 on turquoise - which is aimed at early Y2 readers.
New school have taken him off leveled books, and he is free to select his own. Apparently he reads a couple of years above year 4 / age 8 level.

Personally, somewhere between these two extremes woukd feel right to me!

Chill. Do the school work, then enjoy sharing books with each other - let's be frank, school reading books aren't the most thrilling reading matter in the world, shorter school books mean more fun books!

While I agree with the above posters isn't op saying she can read the lower level books to easily and needs higher now?
If this is the case she's not being challenged and she'll get bored so she does need the higher levels

Ask if they have assessed the children’s reading levels - this is separate to books and they need to get 95% before moving on.

It maybe struggle with some phonics or understanding

Kids don’t read to teachers as they don’t have time. They will read once a week in guided reading sessions

I just get a new book each week at our school. The teacher gives us it. It's often the same band. Isn't there loads of books to read in a particular band?

This week we read the book twice though in 3 days -first time ever!

Ok thanks folks, some really useful points there, really appreciate all your posts. The bit that's most frustrating I think is that my child has actually gone down a couple, rather than just not being moved up. Last year's teacher was really excellent so to see such a difference in judgement has rung alarm bells.

Book bands very widely between schools and teachers. the book band a child is on says very little about reading abilities.
you say your child speeds through - but can they read with expression rather than just rattling the words down?
reading is more than decoding sounds!

I'm a TA in lower KS2. The first couple of weeks in September were spent assessing every child's reading in my year group. The particular assessment tool we use requires a decoding and comprehension accuracy level of 95% before we move a child to a new band. Some children were moved up, but several were moved back. I can't answer for the KS1 TAs, but in KS2 we are kept very busy running the numerous interventions that are needed to address specific gaps and simply don't have time to listen to 8 children read every day. Otoh, several of the interventions are reading based, so that does ensure those children are reading every day, just not on a 1-2-1 basis.

my oldest goes to a school with outstanding results - new kids arriving usually get put down 2-4 book bands, with the resulting outcry from parents. its usually because while kids can rattle down the words they either can’t read with expression, don’t understand the context, or haven’t understood one of the underlying constructs. in the long run, they all do much, much better than schools with the high book bands early on (which make parents happy in KS 1, less so later on)

We have a similar problem. My year 2 refuses to read school books at home. I just get lots of books from the library.

Teachers on this thread - how often would you expect a child to read a reading book they have from school over the week if they read it all in one go? Is twice ok then ask for it to be changed? (Not referring to bands not bothered about them I just don't want her reading the same book over and over when she can do it)

I spent over 8 years as a parent reader at school, listening to children in years one and two. As previous posters have mentioned reading is not just about decoding and a child also needs to develop skills in terms of comprehension, reading fluently and with correct intonation. I had several readers who were brilliant at decoding, but struggled to answer any comprehension questions.
I do think that the teacher should be offering guidance on what your child should focus on to enable them to move to the next level. In the school I helped at, we would write a little note in the reading diary - xxx was great, now need to focus on yyy.

We expect books to be read twice through. (Teacher)

And we want home readers to be ‘easy’. Harder texts are used in class.

And I don’t hear every child read every week from their home reader. I have no TA so that would be a lot of time when the rest of the class are not being taught!

Ok I'm doing the right thing then. TA acted like I shouldn't have brought the book back yet but she's read it twice all in one go each time (cos she wanted to). I know she's ready for the next book. I'm not bothered about bands I just know when she's ready for the next book. (TA hadn't looked at my comments at this point to see my comments in reading record book)

3 times.
First read for decoding
Second for fluency
Third for understanding

Surely if they are reading fluently on the first read then twice is enough? Getting dc to read the same book 3 times would be like pulling teeth! Plus once they can read well they can understand it at the same time so one read would do.

I think by two times you can tell if the child is reading well and comprehending etc yes.

I mainly only ever read the books once with dc1.
2-3 times is trying to use a one size fits all approach as some kids can do all 3 things at once.
I do almost wish our school had the more complex book bands they could borrow if they wanted. As ours only went to lime. And maybe more could have been gained with comprehension.
But generally ive been so happy to be off book bands. The freedom for dc to pick books they like and are interested in.

I dont think BB are an exact science and i found as a parent i had a better idea of dc level.

Op i would definitely read above what you are getting as
You need to reach a level to be able to quickly read and understand the ks1 sats
In ks2 our kids have time to read to themself (yay) so you want them to be able to do this and enjoy it and understand it.

I’d ask the teacher to explain what your DC needs to work on to get moved up to the next level, rather than just asking for higher level books.

If it’s about something like the teacher thinking that your DC needs to be demonstrating comprehension, or reading with expression, then she’s not likely to give out higher level books just yet.

Thanks all, its been really helpful to have such a range of responses and has given me some food for thought before chatting to the teacher.
I think actually we are doing OK with the comprehension side of things, there does seem to be a good understanding of what's happened in the book when we discuss it afterwards which is why I'm reluctant to insist upon a second read as I don't want reading time to become a chore.

@Pinkflipflop85

If schools want reading books to be read 3 times then they need to be much more interesting for kids to read and for parents to listen to