Reading level 26: what does this mean?

[StiffyByng]

Help. My son is in Yr 3 and has significant SEN issues. He hasn’t engaged much in learning but his home school book says he’s been benchmarked for reading at level 26. I have googled and can see at least two systems - I don’t know which his school is using I’m afraid. There’s no mention of any colour band. Can anyone say whether this is age appropriate? He won’t read at home and I’m just curious to know what skills he has.

Yes. he loves Dr Seuss books - Green Eggs and Ham etc. I usually read them to him but maybe I'll get him reading them to me.

In 1957, Dr Seuss was commissioned to write a book using only 223 sight words supplied by the publisher. The publishers believed that if kids could memorize the words in the book, they would be better prepared for reading instruction at school. Dr. Seuss books have been categorized with the ‘look say’ movement, a method of teaching beginners to read by memorizing and recognising whole words, rather than by associating letters with sounds.

Researchers discovered that when preschoolers memorise as sight words the entire texts of such popular books as Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, they develop a block against seeing the words phonetically and thus become "dyslexic." They become sight readers with a holistic reflex rather than phonetic readers with a phonetic reflex

Seuss found writing with these constraints very frustrating. On top of this difficulty was the fact that Seuss himself did not believe in the reading method he was laboring to support. He felt that the lack of focus on phonics and phonetic awareness was a leading cause of illiteracy in the United States.

They seemed to help DS as he just could not blend sounds until he was in year one and was already reading well by then. Are there other more suitable books with nonsense words in them?

Ds could read before he started school & refused to take part in Phonics lessons, I had his teacher's on the phone every week asking why he wasn't interested in phonics & that he would never learn to read but when they did reading tests he read at least 3 years above his age. Phonics isn't for everyone, one size doesn't fit all.

My son was reading fluently before nursery and on entry to school had a reading age in the teens based on the test they used. He could and dud read the Financial Times. He was later diagnosed as having SEN which wasn't picked up due to school relying on a flawed method.

@Nat6999

Ds could read before he started school & refused to take part in Phonics lessons, I had his teacher's on the phone every week asking why he wasn't interested in phonics & that he would never learn to read but when they did reading tests he read at least 3 years above his age. Phonics isn't for everyone, one size doesn't fit all.

I'm afraid the evidence we have from studies of the human brain using neuroimaging doesn't support your belief.

Norestformz My ds is autistic, he could see a word once & remember what it was & from knowing words could work out what longer words were, he scored in the bottom 10% for phonics mainly because he wasn't interested, I spent years faking his reading record because he wasn't interested in books that were too simple for him. It wasn't until he got a teacher in Y3 who understood him & gave him free choice in the school library that he got on in school, he could read & spell really well but because he wasn't interested in phonics the other teachers ignored his ability.

My son is autistic with hyperlexia which is why his reading age was so far above his chronological age but it really doesn't change facts. If the phonics check had been around when he was six he would undoubtedly have failed as it was his difficulties were masked by his hyperlexia and weren't identified until he was assessed by an Ed Psych using a very similar assessment.

I've just been reading about hyperlexia, looking at the signs of it I wouldn't be surprised if ds has it, he didn't sit up until 10 months, didn't walk until 15 months, has hypotonia. He could speak in full sentences by 13 months & his favourite word age 2 was geophysicist, he always used the correct context for any word he used & was obsessed with books from being tiny, I had become disabled after giving birth & spent hours looking at books & reading to him. He never wanted to play with other children because they were boring, he preferred to talk to adults because children didn't understand the way he spoke, very grown up & his interests were adult things.he

Interesting discussion, thank you.

School have come back to say he's reading at age-appropriate levels, which is about all I needed to know!

@StiffyByng

Interesting discussion, thank you.

School have come back to say he's reading at age-appropriate levels, which is about all I needed to know!

Haha - you got more than you bargained for here. Pleased you got your answer. Phonics or not, Level 26 is a very respectable reading level for the end of Y3!

@Oilyvoir

I just wanted to say thank you for your posts and thoughts on this.
I whole heartedly agree with you and it deeply deeply concerns me that phonics is being foisted on all children with no room for flexibility.

My dd 1 seemed to get phonics, but she would have read in any other scheme and was known as an exceptional reader
Dd2 has massively struggled and failed the phonic test.
She simply wasn't moving forwards at all and yet verbally she seemed OK esp agaisnt the benchmark of her high achieving sister.
The school did do some extra phonics work with her and she picked up bits and pieces here and there but not enough to get to the end goal, to read!!

In year 2 I started to do my own research and asked on here and elsewhere and read and researched everywhere.
She hated school, she started to notice her friends with higher book bands, she realised she couldn't read aloud in class when asked which humiliated her, she was struggling to be engaged in class because she couldn't read and everything started to spiral out of control.

We went to flash cards and 100 hfw. She knew a small clutch in the first day's and every one after a few months. We went to Peter and Jane, to again help her build up through site words and repetition, the confidence of reading a whole book, getting the flow and fluency of reading a good simple book helped her enormously it boosted her confidence.
She started to slowly clunk forward with the wheels.. And got on far better with the school books but still clunky.
Then over lock down we did lots more spelling, breaking words down into root, prefixes, suffixes so she started to understand how words are made and slowly everything started to click.

I, got her up several levels in lock down, we joined the reading chest scheme and she went from a slow stage 5 to a nealry fluent stage 9...she could read the simpler Roald dhal books.

We suspect she has dyslexia and lock down gave me that time to help her.

I absolutely dread too think where we would be if I had not stepped in to get her reading by hook or by crook. She amazes me with the words she instinctively gets now.
She's far happier at school, more engaged.. She can read!

I think the blind following of phonics is going to lock many dc like my dd out of eduction. I've literally been so lucky to suddenly perk up and stop "waiting" as I was told for it to click.
By year two a child at my dd reading level and with a failed phonics test should flag up.. We need to try other method not beating with the same stick.

I can't imagine what a dire situation we have would be in had it been left to the school. Parents need to be educated to step in take charge, don't wait etc.
It affected her holistically!
My own reading experience was dm reading an old fashioned now, 70s lady bird book to me and one day I tried to read it by myself and it made sense and I just got it.
I was away from then on and an early reader and was then noted for my advanced reading etc. I was about 3 or 4.
I dislike extreme behaviour I really do and phonics has got an unhealthy cult like following on schools and its dc like mine who will suffer.

@Lemonmelonsun

That is quite a powerful story. I remember a child moving from Level 1 to Level 3 (good old days of levels) in the space of 6 months during his stint on reading recovery in Y2. Effectively moving from the lowest 6 in the year group (60 kids) and joining the highest 6 in the class. Another child with some complex hearing loss meaning he didn't hear sounds of a certain frequency and with quite poor articulation, who physically couldn't connect letters and sounds effectively, being one of my better readers when I was teaching Y1.
Again I know this is anecdotal, but with many many children up and down the country having the same issues, phonics cannot be the holy grail of reading that it is presently being presented as. Though I do think it is vitally important too.

I did mean to say that although most of the contents of this thread weren't relevant to my query, I did find it interesting. My eldest is an obsessive reader at ten but phonics just didn't 'catch' at all. They could barely read through Reception and Year One and then, suddenly, they 'got' it - the class teacher said that some kids just don't click with phonics.

Even though they're a keen reader now, spelling remains pretty poor, even on very familiar words (eg the place we live!), they struggle to read music three years into lessons, and some bits of maths just won't work. It feels like there's some gap in visual learning, and phonics fell into that gap.

I hadn't realised quite how little it had worked until my youngest (middle child as described in OP, so we have never really known what was going on there) who took to phonics immediately, and was able to read three letter words from the start. When you've seen a child sounding out 'C-A-T' and then looking at an illustration featuring a cat and man and guessing 'man', you don't understand that it's possible from day one to have a child that says 'C-A-T, that's CAT'.

I am no expert of any sort but I saw the difference in my kids, and they are fundamentally more or less as bright as each other I think.

@StiffyByng

Sorry to barge on your thread

Yes, my first child got it all and I didn't have to do anything, she wasn't an early reader at all but made steady progress and would point stuff out as she read using phonics jargon. Her reading clicked end of year one and then went on a fast and high trajectory.

Dd 2 never got going with it.
So much time wasted on the wrong scheme for her.

Re spelling can I suggest a spelling Rainow arc, they come with foam letters and you get the child to make the alphabet and then they pull down the letters to make the word, as they get better.. It's good to add ed, ing.. Dis.. Quickly onto words.
We used this after years of getting no where and after pulling the word down she then wrote on a white board and she understood what spelling is. She's a visual learner small tweak.. And yet made enormous difference to her and again, whilst she has issues retaining them or spelling the word the same in the same sentence, it really really helped her self esteem.

The advice to get this, sadly came from outside the school.