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...