New school, new reading scheme

[SecondarySupportHuman]

DD 6 started new school after Easter. She was previously a whole year ahead with her reading, winning reading awards and generally doing very well. Her new school uses a different reading scheme called Little Wandle. I already questioned her teacher why she's coming home with books she could have easily read a year ago, I was told it's a different system etc.
Upon reading a bit more about Little Wandle I am slightly worried it's aimed more at struggling readers and my DD will be bored to death? It's only been a couple of weeks so I wasn't going to raise the subject again just yet, but surely she should be getting books she takes more than 30 seconds to read.
Do any of you have any experience with this reading program, as I'm feeling a bit disappointed she is not enjoying her favourite subject at school anymore :(

We use it where I teach and it has been very successful. We have a lot of groups though so better readers are suitably challenged. It doesn't sound like she is in the right group.

Just let her settle in, being in a new school is daunting enough the teachers will move her when they have some evidence of what she can do. What happens in a term at 6 years old is going to have no impact on her future academic success.

Continue reading books at home, use it as a good excuse to explore the local library and get some new books out.

There are plenty of activities around the books she's bringing home that you can do on comprehension, what could happen next, looking at the art work in the illustrations and recreating it in a comic strip of her own version. Going through the words pointing out specific phonics, digraphs, consonants and vowels, nouns .....

My DC's had a reading scheme at school and it meant that for some children the books they were reading at home were not in line with where the reading scheme placed them. It also meant lots of series of books such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Tom Gates allowed them to read some of them but others were apparently beyond their reach.

For a lot of children they had 2 books, one they brought into school to read as they had a 30 minute reading slot every day and the other was the school book which they read because they had to but not by choice.

If she is relatively new to the school then plough through whatever she is sent home with and she should move on. This is a great lesson in sometimes we have to read books we may not like to know what books we do like. Also that we don't get a choice in school about what we are taught but at home we can choose our own books and to learn about whatever we want.

Thank you for your replies. I am not familiar with this reading scheme and upon googling it came up with very mixed opinions!
I won't be talking to the teachers yet as I know it's too soon, DD has been complaining the phonics is too easy as well.
She is in a smaller school now so I imagine there are fewer ability groups. She went from 3 form to 2 form, so not a massive difference.
The school is supposedly 'better' than her previous school, with better results overall, so I hope I know what they're doing?! Luckily we have plenty of books at home for her to read and we're walking distance to the library as well.

Sorry it meant to say *I hope THEY know what they're doing.... I clearly do not!

There are 2 ability groups in her class from what I know, she's already in the 'higher' one.

If she only started there after Easter, you need to give the teachers a chance to assess her and for her to settle.

I’ve heard from parents of early readers that Little Wandle is very slow on the books front. I think they learn all of the spelling rules alongside so it’s really structured and strict with ordering.

Take it for what it is and just continue the reading at home.

Maybe ask the teacher when they stop using the phonics scheme as it might only be one term you need to accept is a bit slower.

We have Reception to Y2 all in one class and manage with suitable groupings so the school size really shouldn't be an issue!

@Notquitefinishe from my understanding the whole class is doing the same book. As one of the previous posters said I believe it's to do with them looking at grammar as well.
DD was almost finished with her Read Write Inc programme, I hope they will do something about it but not sure how?? Seems a bit counter intuitive to me to do it this way, but I am not a teacher.

Our school uses Little Wandle too and although they have explained the rationale I don't think it caters very well to outliers. DS2 in y1 is reading at around the old white/lime level and the school book represents about 5 minutes of his weekly reading. I don't know how the school uses the scheme in y2 but I hope there's a bit more flexibility.

@Legomania oh no, that's awful, why would they be holding back more able children?? I feel so disappointed, DD was very proud of finishing another level at her previous school and her teachers couldn't praise her enough. I am now reading about Little Wandle that it's known to be bad for able readers! Of course I'll continue reading with her at home, but I feel so disappointed her new school seems worse than her previous one in this regard ☹️

My son had little wandle at his previous school. He was bored silly with it.

He reads level 8 or above at home and at school was getting books with words in such as pat, sit, run etc.

We spoke to his teacher and they said there was no flexibility and the children would move up at the same rate and have the same books for the whole scheme.

I understand it's so that there are no gaps in their knowledge but I'm still struggling to see why they can't just assess them and put them on a suitable level.

I've got a year 2 child (who moved school in early year 1) and a reception child. Year 2 child was behind when he moved and little wandle has been good for him. Reception child is bored silly, I'm now refusing to do the reading book unless she wants to read it. She went from wanting to read anything to sulking her way through the school book and refusing to read anything else. I've decided that until the books in some way catch up to nearer her ability then I will do my own thing at home. I do think that it supports understanding/grammar and writing well.

My dd's school uses Little Wandle. I like it and have heard it has been successful at the school since they changed. My dd, also aged 6, has recently become an enthusiastic reader so I just let her choose books to read from the library/book shop- I would recommend Isadora Moon and Mirabel- she loves these and they are the right level.

Go to the library. Buy her some books. Get a grip. Little blooming waddle isn't going to harm her.
Just ask for harder books.
Give them a chance to sort it out. Parents are such a pain.

@Hiker50 um thank you? Or perhaps not!

Our infant school brought in a new scheme with the same issues (DS2 was a ‘free reader’ and suddenly had books that wanted him to check he could decode ‘best friend’). The school stuck it out for about a term and then issued two books. The one that fit the scheme and an actual reading book.

I think you need to tell DD that reading scheme books are a tool for learning different skills they aren't necessarily for reading for pleasure that is what her home books are for.

When you have an able learner, especially at the beginning alot of time can be spent deep diving a subject (try not to get ahead though) to make it more interesting. So if they are reading books with X phonics I would have read the book with DD, done a second sweep going back through and have her point out various grammatical devices / phonics etc and then got her to write or tell her own story with those devices that the are focussing on.

The Oxford Owl website is free to register and has all the Biff, Chip and Kipper reading scheme plus other books that you can read on a device if you want to use that.

I just bought reading books for home off amazon (they were not expensive) and we focused on that (I was rubbish at remembering to return the school reading books). I explained to the teachers that we were reading at home our own books and they were fine with this. Both dc doing well in school. And as another poster suggested, you could go to the library. We also sometimes did a book exchange with friends (where we each exchange a few books and then return them after a couple weeks).

Thank you all or suggestions. We will go to the library to get more books. It might be a bit of an adjustment from the previous system, where she had it tailored by the school plus getting 1-2 extra books on top every week. Maybe I was spoilt by the previous school.

The problem with a lot of this reading schemes is that they are very prescriptive. (Having seen a lesson plan it comes across as how to teach by numbers.)

Interesting your DD liked Read Write Inc - mine loathed it. I knew why the school were using it and their rationale but these reading schemes don’t tend to cater well for outliers, however they are good at getting most to read. We just read the book once and then enjoyed reading other things and I put that in her reading record instead. Now thankfully we’re well off Read Write Inc and the school have said she can pretty much she wants. So I’d just let her keep enjoying reading!

If it helps, DS2 is at the same school and has the same teacher as DS1, who was also an able reader in Y1. DS1 was given books at an appropriate level and got new books daily. The school had to change its approach because the government guidance changed.

Our school introduced LW when DS2 was in Y1. DS1 did Oxford reading tree.
DS2 has always found reading easy and was frustrated with the early LW books as the phonics groups were slightly different so they had to repeat some sounds.
However DS2 could sound out pretty much anything was middle of Y2 when he finished the scheme and moved back to the higher colours and has great spelling. DS1 by contrast doesn't remember phonics as well and finds spelling harder.
We did give DS2 chapter books at home but we also found his reading (sounding the words) was ahead of his understanding of what they actually meant

Just read something else with her then. Read the reading books and really make sure she understands them and is reading with inflection then find something else to read together.

My 6YO's reading books are oxford reading tree. Tbh she could easily read and comprehend at least 2 book bands higher than she's on but there's just no point arguing with the teachers. We read them once or twice, talk as much as we can about them then read something else.

The reading scheme books have a purpose and are, I think, well designed for that purpose but we should be teaching kids to really love books and to broaden their access to reading material. We only do that by encouraging free reading from a young age and having plenty of varied reading material available. We don't do it by reinforcing that reading is a chore to be ticked off in a chore book reading diary