Best reading scheme of banded books to help my child please? Eg. Collins, Oxford reading tree

[ChaosAndCuddles]

Hello, I’m teaching my daughter phonics as her nursery don’t do anything related and although she doesn’t start reception till September, she turned 4 in September so I think the time right.

I am a teacher myself but I work in a junior school and mostly in Year 6. I am looking for a good set of banded reading books that my daughter can apply her phonics knowledge to.

I’d like to know what your children enjoyed reading and your thoughts as parents please.

You can extend her phonological awareness and knowledge much more effectively orally, as you should know.

Some children do teach themselves to read at 4, but if she needs to be taught, leave it to reception. It's not very far away and you can extend then as necessary.

She's just going to learn them again from scratch next year. And the school may use a completely different system. I'd just focus on reading to her and having fun.

We like Songbirds.

I completely understand your question and I'm surprised others are discouraging you, especially for a September-born girl who would be doing this now anyway if she was born a week two earlier!

If I were you I would find out what method your chosen school uses (I guess your first choice school on your application as I don't think you've had this confirmed yet?). My school use Read Write Inc, but my sons' nursery did a different approach so he had to relearn a bit.

I would then find out what reading books the school uses so you can avoid them so your child doesn't get bored of them! RWI have a set. My son is currently reading Big Cat books through school, which he has got on really well with. I have been told Julia Donaldson's songbirds are great, and may get these as extras.

Just to add, between my son's nursery and me, my son knew all the basic phonics before he started school. I was utterly shocked at how quick the pace was in Reception though- some kids arrived already being able to read. Everyone had told me that it doesn't matter if they've done phonics or not already, but in my experience it made a difference- my son was already behind despite having what I thought was decent phonics knowledge! If he didn't have this basic phonics knowldge when he started, I think he would have floundered. He is now reading fairly well - probably average for the class (although he was below average before Christmas).

Thank you! My daughter most likely will go to the school that I teach in due to staff priority. I know the infant school uses Little Wandle to teach phonics but I’ll need to confirm what banded books they read so that I can avoid them.

I agree about what you said regarding the quick pace of reception. I find primary school like that in general and for some children, pre-teaching is really beneficial. We use it as a method all the time.

We love the twinkl phonics books 'Rhino readers' though they are pricey! I personally think they are the best early readers currently available.

Little wandle have their own books. It is a great approach with lots of pre reading before the books come home. Some libraries do have them. My eldest learnt to read with them and they are fab.

my youngest is the same as yours and wants to read. I bought songbirds on Facebook marketplace and they are really good. Easy to follow and based on the phonics sounds.

Totally agree. If your daughter is going to go to the school you work at, can't you just ask the Reception teacher for advice though?

This is what I thought...why ask a colleague at the actual school your child will be attending when you can ask a bunch of randoms on the Internet instead 😂

I used books from phonicbooks. I used their beginner readers for DD2 and I’m using the catch up readers for DD1. The books aren’t cheap but I have managed to pick a lot up second hand and then sold them on when finished with.

I’d also have a look at sounds/write, they have a couple of free courses you can do which show how to teach the initial sounds, they also have an iPad app which DD2 really liked. The app isn’t gimmicky, you need to do it with them but it makes it very easy to do.

Both these use a linguistic phonics approach which is different to little wandle, I don’t think that is a problem. I taught DD2 the initial code before she started school because she begged me to teach her. She had no problem when she started school and progressed really well on little wandle.

DDs school have the little wandle scheme books they are Collins big cat books, they were ok but the repeated reading of the same book was a bit tedious.

DS also starting in Sept and interested in reading, didn't know where to start so went to the library learning to read section to look over all the different schemes!
He likes Biff, Chip and Kipper books (Oxford Reading Tree) as he likes to recognise the same characters in the books and I've not seen any other schemes with this. Quite good for phonics but sometimes a bit shoe-horned in, so will use an odd choice of word that he doesn't know so I end up explaining lots of word meanings and stops the fluency.
I like the reading champions ones too and they're nice quite simple stories with more day to day language used.
He's also found some fonts easier to read than others so found it helpful to look through books in different schemes to see what the text is like.

No harm in asking parents who also have experience! Yes, I can ask the reception teachers but I work in the Junior School which is very separate to the Infant school with different management and a different site, so it’s not a ‘pop down the corridor on a Monday morning’ task.

I want to avoid using the same scheme as the school as she’ll end up bringing books home that she already has.

I'm a reception teacher and early years lead.. I did lots of phonological awareness stuff such my two but didn't teach them any phonics until they went to school.. eldest is 8 and was always bang on track for reading. Youngest is 6 and is 18 months ahead of where he "should' be..,

Ask to speak internally to the early years teachers at your school.. does the infant school have a nursery? If so they can advise on the pre-phonics they use.

Going with a different scheme will cause confusion.. the best thing to do is to keep doing lots of "phase 1 letters and sounds" type activities.

My school changed between my sons and now does Little Wandle. I was super sceptic but DS2 (non reader when he started reception) flew through the scheme and now is a super secure reader held back only by his maturity).
DS1 found reading hard. He loved the Julia Donaldson songbirds. You can usually find them being sold on deal or second hand. But their phonics included at each levels are slightly different to Little Wandle which uses some extra ones.

Join "Reading Chest"! It is a subscription service where they own all of the reading schemes, then you can borrow books of your choice from their stock, and swap them out for new ones when you are done. Like a paid-for library (this covers postage fees as well as admin and standard wear and tear on stock), but entirely reading scheme books.

Lots of singing and nursery rhymes and reading quality books to your child - phonics books are awful. ( IMHO)

My DS learned all his letter sounds at nursery at a nice age appropriate pace of one per week. The nursery used the twinkl sheets so not aligned to a phonics scheme as such. I wasn't really aware that he had learned so much but he started blending CVC words in the summer before starting reception and then absolutely flew with his reading. Agree with previous posts that the reception pace is fast these days so it was nice to have one less thing to worry about.

The only way that phonics schemes really differ from each other is in the order that the phonemes are taught in. You can’t really go wrong, I would crack on. Reading Chest is a really good shout.

I realise this is an old post, but jumping on to see if anybody has a referral code for Reading Chest :) Thank you x

@Danni2704 you are much more likely to get a relevant answer to your question if you start a new post with a title such as:

Referral Code for Reading Chest?