Reading - Yr 1

[goldpendant]

Evening everyone,

I'm not sure whether I'm overreacting so would appreciate any input/thoughts on how kids school is coordinating reading.

When DS was in Yr 1 (now in Yr4), they came home with two books, twice per week (so four per week total). Parents used to come in and volunteer and manage all aspects of book changes.

Since covid, school has changed the way it does things. No parents are allowed to volunteer.

DD now in Yr 1 gets one book a week sent home, and one e book. School are saying they want to emphasise fluency, so each book should be read over and over until perfect (memorised)? This just seems to turn DD off and understandably it's boring.

DD is really struggling to make progress. She is more typically able than DS, yet DS was on a higher reading level at the same point.

She is bored with the one book that comes home. She reads them in a minute or two. I write comments in her reading record to this effect but the comments are ignored.

I'm a bit loathe to complain as we had numerous issues through lockdown that I was quite vocal about but I just feel like we are being fobbed off a bit and the children will suffer.

This is an 'outstanding' school.

Would really appreciate any insight into what your Yr1 gets?

They don't get any homework apart from sporadic crumpled sheets of paper in school bag requesting we 'practise' certain phonics. That's another thread though

Dd2 is year 2 now but they get a new book every day/as soon as they have finished the previous one. The children know what colour they are and choose their own.
Comments definitely read too and replied to.
State school - Greater London

Sorry posted too soon - lovely that you bought the set. How can they love books if they don't get books!!!

Mine gets them changed two or three times a week as long as they've been read. I'd be happy with three books all changed at once if they only want to change once a week.

In the holidays we go to the library for extras.

Mine is at a state school and also reads twice a week at school. However my elder daughter, when she was in year one at the same school it wasn't nearly so good. My year one child now has a super teacher/TA and it shows.

So just to be clear, would you all be a bit pissed off with one book per week? And one e book?

I would not be happy, especially if she's finding the current level easy. I'd ask for her to be assessed.

Yes I would be pissed off and having a moan about it. I wouldn’t entertain an E book either, buts that’s my preference. And mine are at state school, a very small rural one. And if I didn’t instigate reading more, it wouldn’t happen.

My DD is in state school Year 1 and gets one phonics/reading book, and one ‘reading for pleasure’ book that we’re meant to read to her.

We were told that they should read the same book repeatedly each week to build up fluency. DD does get bored of doing that so I guess it’s up to you/us as parents to mix it up a bit.

But if you think she’s on the wrong level, just ask for her to be assessed. Our school said that kids should be able to read about 90% of the book fairly easily and if it was more or less than that, to ask to be assessed.

For PPs labelling this girl ‘behind’ at this point, children who are in Year 1 now have had a significantly disrupted experience of schooling and have literally never experienced a normal year at school. They’ll get there.

My dd is the same as yours. They might be I. The same class for all I know.

1 reading book at school per week, red book band, we usually only read it twice before it is boring

I signed her up to reading chest over the summer as she was only just beginning to blend and start to read the pink level books around Easter of reception and I wanted to keep the momentum up

I am a little anxious she is behind according to published reading levels, but then I think she has missed nearly 2 terms of nursery/reception and is a May birthday so a good 8 months younger than some students would be and I can see she is progressing.

I’m curious as to what happens to her cohort - last year her reception teacher mentioned everyone was behind expected when they started. My common sense says that they will eventually catch up.

@goldpendant

So just to be clear, would you all be a bit pissed off with one book per week? And one e book?

Do you know how long book change takes when you spend time with the child and ask them about their reading that week? In an absolute bursting timetable which demands the full national curriculum, probably a mix of transitional activity for year 1s as well as phonics, guided reading and all of the rituals of a primary school such as assemblies, hand washing before lunch and playtime…

Especially if you are expecting us to read the comments thoroughly?

But anyway, there is nothing wrong with one phonics book a week, plus an e-book. You are to use it to build the key skills of word decoding, prosody (reading with expression) and comprehension. That can be done well with one book.

Are you getting her to spot the different sounds? What’s the grapheme making the /oo/ sound? Are you asking her to read it aloud? Like a storyteller? Are you asking questions that get her to relate it to her own experiences, as well as retrieve information from the text?

It’s only ‘boring’ if you are flinging the book at her and saying she can read it. Should only be 5-10 mins a day so you can split into chunks to practice the different skills.

Speak to the teacher. I’m sure they’ll be happy for her to take some books home from the book corner if you have none at home.

But you might want to change your attitude- seems very much like you are gunning for the school and wishing to start a bunfight over something completely reasonable. ‘Pissed off about 1 book and 1 e book’

I could point you to a load of free resources, but I don’t really want to. Hopefully your class teacher will be more accommodating.

Mine get 3 books a week at the moment, but from year 1 they change themselves. I know the theory seems to be now that they are supposed to reread for fluency but my DC get very cross at being made to read what are generally pretty rubbish stories more than twice (once to themselves and once aloud to me). DS in particular also just recited from memory rather than building fluency reading so it was also a pointless exercise, as he had a good memory but was slow to acquire sight words.

It's easy enough to get hold of extra books by buying 2nd hand off eBay / from a local library, and new stories kept my DC happy about reading rather than turning it into a battle. At red level, songbirds is good and you can also get books of something like 6 in 1 stories in 1 book pretty cheaply from Read with Oxford. Friends have also been able to pick various sets up cheaply at Costco.

Why don't you just go to your local library and pick books there?

Also recommend second hand books if you feel you need to buy some, definitely no point purchasing new.

Suprima that is true it takes ages to do it that way, but that's not essential every time. My DD changes her own books. Yes some kids probably pick from the wrong box or just forget but most seem to manage it. Once a week they check the logs (no discussion) and they aim separately to read once a week with each child. This doesn't happen every week with DD, which I'm fine with, as they know she is reading regularly at home and progressing fine. So more books can be achieved without much more input. Especially if 2-3 books are chosen at once.

We also:

• use online books. DD is distracted by pressing the buttons and it's not as comfortable sitting round a laptop
• visit the library. The books aren't colour coded so I have to look through loads and judge if they are the right level
• buy books but DD memorizes them after 2 reads so gets costly

I think the OP has a fair point that arguably giving her DD another book or two on book change day would make it much easier to support her at home.

Your point about all the different ways of reading the book is interesting and something I need to do more of. We tend to read and ask questions but look at the phonics etc less as that wouldn't have occurred to me really.

I’d be so pissed off, we get books changed every day as long as they’ve read them.

I’d also add though you might find there is a limit to how many books there actually are. We exhausted the blue books at the end of reception for example and there weren’t any new ones we hadn’t had so just kept getting the same ones after a while. Your school might be playing a numbers game if there aren’t many books at each level.

I think there are concerns re year 1 in general. There are a number of issues within our class but fortunately reading doesn’t seem to be one off them.

@Hollyhead

I’d be so pissed off, we get books changed every day as long as they’ve read them.

Same here. One book a week is ridiculous.

My DS2 refused to read school books from year 1 on wards. He could basically read by this point so we just let him read whatever he wanted. School did not mind because they just wanted him to read everyday. He is in year 4 now and he still refuses to use the school library.

Suprima, do I sound like the kind of parent that flings books at my child, honestly?

I'm well aware how long book changes take - I happily used to volunteer to do it twice a week!

Your post isn't hugely helpful, I know teachers feel they get a rough time on MN but you sound like you're looking for a bunfight too.

I said in my original post I was loathe to make another complaint with school. I am astounded, as ever, by the discrepancies across state schools. This post and the responses have empowered me to speak up.

Of course we use the library, but our has limited scheme books. DC have shelves full of books but very few that reinforce what they are taught at school. I work full time and just want to know if I'm being unreasonable to expect a bit more to come home from school to help us support DD.

@goldpendant

So just to be clear, would you all be a bit pissed off with one book per week? And one e book?

With my child, yes. Her books were changed regularly, sometimes they would leave a book in for a day after we'd finished it so we could read it once more. But then she would get another. She would usually get through 3/5 books a week in yr1 and it was done by the TA. So yes I would want her books changed more frequently.

They get 1 physical book a week and access to ebooks via bug club . We do not use the ebooks. Homework is often playing games/ doing lessons on bug club. They already get so muchbsvreen time at school and nothing quite like a physical book.
I would recommend some of the usborne readers collections.. there's loads. Levels vary a bit depending on scheme, but if you type 'step into reading / ladybird / I can read/ national geographic level 2' there's quite often pictures of inside to get idea of what sort of level your little one needs.

Our school only does 2 books a week.
My dc did progress very fast but we also used reading chest.
Dc2 is struggling a lot more.
She did remember all digraphs etc last mar after lockdown. But dont know what happened between then and jul because they just left dc on the AZ books. And even now only on ones including the digraphs that should have been given out last year (we had 0 books during lockdown which would have been ok except for the above afterwards.
Anyway i do have lots of books at home including julia domdson phonics ones and some big cat.
Actually the nimber of books is less annoying than the school choosing as they only listen to them 6 times a year. So the levels are all wrong.

The differences in y1 must be huge as some kids missed a lot of important time with phonics whereas others didnt miss a day.
If we'd had access to the books

We get two books a week. They are supposed to be read 3 times each - once for de-coding, once for expression and once for fluency or something like that. We read them 1 time and subscribe to Reading Chest to get books posted to us for the other days. Her teachers are happy with this as DD reads fluently so doesn't need to read the book 3 times.

Yr1 DS gets about 3 books a week. A book gets put in his bag and we're to read it at least three times before sending back and it's replaced with another.

First read is for applying phonics and trying to read each word. The other reads are to obtain better fluency and comprehension. It's bloody boring but it really does work and I can see he is improving a lot from doing it this way.

My DD is in year one, she gets a new book everyday which we read each night, she reads at least twice a week with the teacher and also brings an additional ‘difficult’ book home most nights that I read to her. She also has flash cards sent home with her each week of common words. I think what your daughter is getting is poor.
I do think though that they’re told to take responsibility for swapping their books however which I think is quite a big expectation of a 5/6 year older to remember 😂

1 book a fortnight. My school is obviously pretty slack