New reader books getting to difficult too quickly

[apricotjamandbutter]

My DS is in reception technically and now he is off I have been trying to find him some book schemes to read, but he starts off and it's easy 3 letter type words and then he's doing really well and we go onto the next stage and it's really long words with multiple diagraphs and it's too much for his concentration. Can someone suggest a scheme that is gradual?

What scheme are you using that does that? Could it be a non phonics one that is expecting kids to guess/memorise longer words?
All the phonics ones my kids had went nice and slowly. In the early stages we liked Julia Donaldson's songbirds books for example. There aren't a huge number of books but they're really sweet and nicely staged.

Currently have Songbird set and some others including Blaze & Thomas phonics which are ridiculously bad. Book one in the Blaze pack has the word Lasso, I mean honestly it's not phonics despite saying it.

@thirdfiddle he's started stage 2 in the songbird, I agree they are nice books, but this stage is currently too hard and quite long. The level 1 he can do easily. I can't keep him reading the same 6 or so books over and over.

Try phonicbooks.co.uk . They have reasonably priced sets at each level and lots of information about appropriateness of each stage based on phonic knowledge. I think Dandelion readers are at a CVC stage.

Also look at oxford owl website and reading eggs is doing a 30 free trial.

Dandelion readers
Jelly and bean are excellent too

You need more books in the stage 1 / book band pink level. You can get extra songbirds or any other Oxford reading tree ones, or go to oxfordowl and read the pink ones there. Most kids need to read lots at each level before moving up.

Ah yes, what wtftodo says then ^

I think there are 12 songbirds in each level, certainly in the earlier levels.

https://www.phonicbooks.co.uk/shop/ are the best for providing that gradual approach the early books are also available as ebooks

DD is on yellow band at school so we have looked for yellow band books. Oxford Owl someone mentioned has free ebooks if you register (also free). It's only about 8 but will keep us going for a few weeks. Not sure what we will do after that. School were sending home 3 books a week, so that's a lot to buy!

@apricotjamandbutter

Currently have Songbird set and some others including Blaze & Thomas phonics which are ridiculously bad. Book one in the Blaze pack has the word Lasso, I mean honestly it's not phonics despite saying it.

They’re American, we watch a lot of Sheriff Callie on Disney Junior and they do pronounce it phonetically.

Where we would say ‘lass-u’ they say ‘lass-oo’.

We have many early reader books, and I find the same thing. Songbirds are the best IMO, but you have those. Usborne very first reading are good (have an adult and child section and you take turns), but they ramp up quickly.

We also have

• Reading Champions - also ramp up quickly.
• Ladybird firsts (big set and extra S1&S2 Peppa Pig’. - way over our heads!
• Ruth Miskin Superphonics - 3 stories in one book. The first 2 are appropriate, the third very long so lost interest.
• Biff Chip & Kipper set from 10 years ago, (but the books are still available to buy in other formats), ok, but ramp up quickly.
• Reading Ladder - way way way over our heads.

I’ve found the Oxford ones the best, (Songbirds and Biff et al), plus the Usbourne ones.

I did buy the Read Write Inc Red Ditty books (and the writing work books) and they’re a lovely pairing together. I got the black and white paper ones, that were £11-ish for 10. (£6 for the writing ones). But I’d only get those if your school uses that scheme or it may get confusing.

I'd check with school of they have an 'online library' first that they children use. That what's our school do. The children can use it at home and school and the books match the level as the ones they are sent home with. They earn coins for each book read that they can buy rewards with, and most books have a little 'bug' you click on to answer questions about the text. It's really helpful. They call it Big Club but I don't think that's it official name

Try Ransom Reading stars.
Dies he know many digraph sounds yet? Write a list of the digraphs he can use - That will give you a idea of which books will be ok to start with.

Bug Club is an online reading scheme however the books don't offer a gradual approach over the basic book banding method and is a mixture of decodable and Look and Say ...

Maybe this is how it is. He's done diagraphs like ll, ss in school, but they were just starting the vowel ones. The song birds seem to skip up quickly to three letter diagraphs..I'll have to find the easier ones from level 2 to start with, but he likes to choose.

Here is a pic from book one of phonics Thomas .. has the word Happy.

We tried to do a level two song bird one yesterday, but it was too much

I will look at the suggested Oxford and Dandelion thank you.

We have bug club at school it's great, but once he's done the books he doesn't want to repeat as he won't get more points I did get his teacher to reset the ones
Luckily.

"Spl" isn't a trigraph, it's three separate correspondences s, p, l
One of the key steps in songbirds level 2 is learning to sound out 2 or 3 consonant correspondences in a row.
A digraph is something like "th" where there are two letters corresponding to a single sound.

"Here is a pic from book one of phonics Thomas .. has the word Happy. "

This is a good example of books claiming to be phonics when they're actually require the child to use other clues ...very poor quality produced by publishers who clearly don't understand phonics but jumping on the bandwagon and letting children down.

If you have a look at hope education, they have some phonics packs of the Dandelion books for £28, and if you search there’s a 10% off code. There are packs of 35 books from the various Oxford sets in phase sets, but they’re pretty pricey at £150.

www.readingchest.co.uk/
We’ve found the above great for getting fun books from lots of different schemes, at whatever level, you can easily move up and down and I would say it’s much preferable to buying early readers. Was amazing in last lockdown when DD4 started to read. The books are much better I think than the local library has. It’s about £10 a month but you get 3 deliveries of 3 books for that...

I mean 9-10 books in total a month...can pay more for more books.

I think our children are at similar levels and I’ve been doing something similar. I really like the usborne first reading library. It’s been nice to read a story together as they are much more fun than ‘Sid had a nap’ type ones. There are other books similar to the level 1 songbirds- we got Sam’s backpack so we had a few more stories at that level. So far we’ve just started on the level 2 songbirds and finding them fine so I’d maybe do a few more level 1s if he’s finding them too tricky. We’ve just started getting red books from school and I think they are quite a step up but in a manageable way. But, I looked at some of the red C ones on bug club and they would be too hard as mine hasn’t learnt all of the digraphs. There seems to be a fair amount of progression within the red band.

From what you say, he's happy reading on a screen?

Read write Inc is very strictly phonics based. The first three levels don't have any vowel digraphs, so will work fine with whatever he's learning at school (after that they do things in a different order and won't). If you go to the Oxford Owl free library, you under the series filter pick 'read write Inc', you'll be able to get a selection for free.

The colours confusingly are different to book band colours. The red read write Inc books my DC found like an easy pink book band / hard red. There are 3 of them there and each has 4 (very short) stories in - so 12 total. The next level is green and then purple, I think there are 3 of each. Don't look at the pink ones, that's where the different sounds start.

If you really get on with the Read write Inc books you can buy black and white photocopy type sets cheaply on Amazon of more books at those levels (something like 11 pounds for 10 books), but I'd definitely try them for free first.

My DC also liked the Usborne very first reading books mentioned above but as a pp poster said they go up in difficulty fast. We also bought some of the Dandelion books for precisely the same reason as you. We found they were great up to level 8 when there's suddenly a jump in difficulty where they do the multi consonant blends like 'spl'. Once the DC get over that hump, they are great again - but we had to go away and read other stuff for a while.

Maybe work on flashcards of digraphs then words of digraphs?
I think books move on quickly because children grasp the digraph and then books focus on that for a bit then onto say knight etc.
Dc2 is struggling a bit with books. Is fine with individual words but the step up to sentences and several of thgem on a page.

Please avoid flash cards it is an ineffective strategy that leads to reading problems for many.

The pp said flashcards of digraphs - presumably practising sounding them out not memorising words. Not a silly idea if child is finding a whole sentence of words a bit intimidating at the moment.