Advice/experience re P3 (age 7) reading levels

[prettybird]

Ds is in P3 (Scotland - English equivalent is roughly Y2). I'm wanting to find out what level other kids who are either in or have been through P3 are reading at this stage. I'd also appreciate the thoughts of any teachers around (eg Sammac)

Ds, who is in the "middle" group is reading ORT Stage 6 (The Giant, Robin Hood etc). The "top" group are reading Stage 8 I think. All the kids are given the same book for a week. Ds is getting really bored with it - and I know the kids in the top group are also being bored.

The writing/speling work they are getting also seems pretty basic: for example tonight he has a page from the Nelson Spelling Workbook 3, where he has to "find and copy the words in each set which share the rime [sic] pattern. Cross the odd one out. Colour only the pictures of those with the same rime". The words sets are "ten bed men pen hen"/"fed bed red led pen"/"peg beg ten leg"/"vet pet wet leg jet".

To my mind, this is the sort of stuff that ds was doing in P1 - and that is a boy who struggling with learning to bllend and therefore read properly (as opposed to learn off by heart) - but he did finally "click" last year, and even in P1 he was capable of wiritng and recognising three letter belnds if the picture is there (as it is in this case). Therefore this three letter blending is really boring him. God knows what homework like this is doing to the kids in the "top" group: I know they get the same writing homework.

I'd like the thoughts of those who have been through it/are going through it if this is an acceptable level. We are planning on taking it up with the teacher - but want to get other people's experiences before we do so.

In general we are very happy with the school - it is just this year we have some concerns about the teacher, who we don't think is stretching the kids. (Don't even ask me about Numbers: ds' homework this week was to complete a 10x10 number block with the the numbers 1 to 100 in order, with random numbers already filled in: this is a child who is already teaching himself the times tables ).

We could go direct to the depute head, who we get on really will with (and who has particular responsbility for both the junior school in particualr and literacy in general) but we want to go through the proper process first and give the teacher a chance to explain/redeem herself first.

So, pretty please: what is the experience of other Mumsnetters in Scotland?

[bozza]

DS is in Y2 (will be 7 in Feb). He changes his reading book when he has read it. The books he is on atm are short chapter books. The last one had 7 chapters in a comic style. I don't see why home reading books need to be done on a group basis rather than each individual child reading at their own level - so maybe your DS on ORT7? Sounds like 6 is a bit easy, but he is not ready for 8.

However the whole class does get the same numeracy/literacy/spellings homework. Because I did mention at parents evening that DS found the spellings very easy. "went" this week for instance, although that was the easiest of the 6. The numeracy and literacy are not stretching DS although are more advanced than what your DS is doing.

However apparently one of the parents has asked for additional, more advanced maths homework. The teacher asked me if DS wanted to do it and so I said he might as well. It was splitting up hundreds, tens and units and not that difficult once DS got down to it. Getting down to it was the difficult part.

[prettybird]

The numeracy that ds is doing in school is much more advanced than his homework - but as I said to the depute, I can't really tell if it is stretching him, as we only get to see what he brings home as homework.

To be fair, the language homework he got home yesterday (which he says was the same for everyone) did stretch hm a wee bit, as it happened to be on the area he is weak in. He had to identify which was correct of a number of pairs of words, not all of which he had come across before: sledge/slegde, carott/carrot, bonana/banana, table/tabel, hat/het, sorsages/sausages.

[gomez]

Just catching up PB - that all sounds encouraging from the school. I hope you feel a bit happier with things now.

[prettybird]