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 :(

It might be they are still trying to work out where she is.

My dd started school in year 1 (from abroad) and they gave her a really easy book that didn't impress her! Dd took a book in from home that she could easily read (dick king smith I think) and read to the teacher who agreed she didn't need reading scheme books! Teachers do need to assess though

The scheme is very expensive for schools to purchase because of the in depth resources that accompany the books. The books are selected in alignment with the phonics teaching. The children are regularly assessed on their phonics progress and taught daily. The books focus not only on the actual phonics and fluency but prosody and comprehension skills. I have seen it be very effective in children of all different abilities. Have faith in the school and encourage your child to read lots of other books outside of school. Sounds like you have a keen DD who will have a lifelong love of readying!

By the time she brings the book home she’ll have read it three times in school, which could be why she’s finding it easy. Like previous commenters mentioned LW promotes more than just deciding the words on the page at speed, but also understanding the book as a whole and developing good reading aloud skills. Of course your daughter may already have those skills but lots of seemingly able readers don’t which is why LW has potentially easier phonetical books to help develop them. A child also needs to be secure in reading al the phonemes in a book before they can be given it to read which again helps with fluency (which is little wandles big thing)

I absolutely hate these reading schemes - they are so prescriptive and the children get bored to death with just one reading book a week (our school doesn't appear to have enough books so they were sometimes repeating the same book for several weeks). A friend's child is in an academic independent and they get a new reading book every day!
My daughter is also in Year 1, so to outsmart the system I bought a bundle of Collins Big Cat books at the appropriate level. We then read a different one every day - the books themselves are great and the non fiction ones are very informative. After only 3 weeks she jumped to the top band and is very close to being a free reader now. Like you I could sense her losing confidence and interest, so felt that it was a necessary intervention.

I did Little Wandle in a year 1 class in my last school. I had 6 groups for reading because they were at different points. It was difficult to complete 6 reading groups three days a week but we did it and saw good levels of progress.

@wonderingwhatlifemeans I wonder why DD's school only has 2 reading levels, I highly doubt 60 kids across two classes all fall onto those? We bought some more books for her to read and she's enjoying them.

We found the reading scheme at school didn't work for ds2 and ds1. (Ds2 had had a spurt and the books were too easy and ds1 has dyslexia but they would not give him easier books as they were in the infant corridor)

We joined www.readingchest.co.uk and they loved getting books through the letterbox.

I was a fan of Little Wandle at first but I think it’s too slow now. It’s not about boredom. We read plenty outside of the scheme but she is learning to sight read instead which probably defeats the point of using Little Wandle.

@SecondarySupportHuman well yes I would question the two groups. Dd is in a composite class with 14 total and they have seven groups.

Unfortunately I think most of these reading schemes are aimed at those children who need extra help, and those children who are good readers end up bored.

When my DD2 was in primary she ended up being able to take her own books or getting 2 books a weeks from the school library as in year 2 she reading YR 6 books.

Wait to you get to High school and they may end up using yet another reading scheme, which again is aimed those children who are not at the right reading level and not the advanced readers.

There are five levels of books within the scheme. Admittedly two of my groups were following each other on the same phase of books but the others were spread through the scheme.

@wonderingwhatlifemeans I had no idea there are only 5 levels, she is doing level 5 so at least it won't be for too long!!
Admittedly her previous reading scheme (Read Write Inc) was also horrendously boring at the start, but she sped through the worst books.

@SecondarySupportHuman I have taught both and do feel that Little Wandle is marginally better. I would really emphasise that she can choose her own 'fun' books that may be more challenging for her as long as they are not too mature in content. The little Wandle one should be more of a performance as she should have read that three times at school and so should really know it.

Schools are under great pressure to demonstrate that children are only reading books at their phonic level based on their most recent test. Reading for challenge and fun is only allowed to start really once they are phonically secure. This is the way it is and schools are criticised if they do not show fidelity to the scheme they are using.

There are 30 odd children in a class and 1 teacher. TAs are usually trying to manage SEN children. The teaching needs to cover a big range of abilities. Able children should be able to progress easily and are already doing well. Teaching should concentrate on trying to help the lower ability children as they are likely to have a harder time in life.
Obviously in an ideal world class sizes would be much smaller and teachers could help all abilities.
In reality teachers are having to teach children basic life skills/parent the children and manage behaviour, quality teaching suffers as a result.

We use Little Wandle. We changed to it fairly recently and we've seen increasing levels of fluency and comprehension with our children. It definitely isn't aimed at struggling readers and we are finding it more robust that our previous schemes.

The books children bring home should be ones the children can access fluently and confidently, they bring them home to practise fluency, prosody and comprehension having already read them 3 times at school with a trained teacher or TA.

The school should be doing regular phonics and reading assessments - it's roughly every 6 weeks, though for some groups it may be more frequent. A child cannot move to the next level until they reach a certain level of independent ability - this is based in the next set of graphemes. The child must be able to read all, or almost all, [the scheme sets out how many] of the graphemes, words using them and the next set of tricky words.

Some parents were concerned as it seemed like their children had gone 'down' reading levels. However, a year on children across school are making increased progress with their indecent, fluent reading. The indications from our year 1 children due to do their phonics screening is that our, already good, results should be even better this year.

It's a fairly intense scheme that requires children to be listened to read 3 times a week as well as daily phonics and regular 1:1 assessments.

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

In our classes, most classes have several reading groups. Some may only have 1 or 2 in the group, others 5 or 6. Each group are usually at different book levels.

The phonics lessons are generally whole class, except for a handful of children per class who have more intense sessions and catch up sessions as well.

If done properly the reading part of the scheme certainly doesn't hold good readers back. We have a handful of children in year 1 who are reading fluency 4+ books - which is basically the old free reading. In year 2 we have a similar amount as previously on these fluency books.

We are an infant school so we use the scheme throughout the school. Reception and year 1 do the phonics aspect. Year 2 move onto the bridge to spelling and spelling units.

Our local junior school is also now using LW and continue with the spelling units. They will use the reading and book aspect of the scheme for those children who still need it.

In addition to a school LW reading book (sent home once a week, for a week, all children also take home a reading for pleasure book from the library and/or classroom. This is a free choice and is intended for parents to read with the child.

Within those levels though there are sub levels. Some of the levels (we use the term Phases) there are sometimes 5 or 6 sub-levels.

After the final phase (phase 5 set 5 I think) there are some Fluency level books as well.

Books from other schemes can be used in some places, where necessary, but need to match the correct phase/set - these are based on the graphemes used in those books which are written in the outside of the books.

My kids do Accelerated Reader scheme and I don't think that's working here, so maybe there's no right answer! Dd9 is dyslexic and can't remember the detail to pass the quizzes. Ds6 is reading at age 9.5yrs and brings home these whopping books that are too fat for him really and with content I'm not sure about for his age.

As a teacher and a parent of a year 1 child I would say relax.

First of all, there aren't 5 levels in LW. There are 5 phases and those are divided into sets. She would be expected to be secure with phase 5 sounds by the end of year 1.
They do read the same book in class for the week but the sessions focus on decoding (so actually reading the individual words using their phonic knowledge ), comprehension and prosody (reading with fluency, expression, correct intonation)
Phonics is usually 20-30 mins each morning. She will also be reading different texts in English and taking in all manner of other texts in her other subjects. She will also be learning to apply the phonics in her writing.

My own child could read at 3 but is a distinctly average writer! Phonics sessions include both reading and writing input so it doesn't harm him at all to review all the sounds in phonics sessions!

If she is very advanced and already secure with all the sounds, reading independently and fluently then honestly don't stress about the book that comes home. Give it a read together once and then just read something else. Daily reading is really important when they're early readers but it can be anything! My son really enjoys the magic treehouse books at the moment and has also just discovered the Beano and is reading that at night with his torch! Practice asking each other questions about it if you want to stretch her a bit.

You have to trust the school - LW is fine as a program. There are pros and cons to all of them. We often have parents coming and claiming their kids are years ahead because they can read some book from some particular scheme but there's a lot more that goes into them being a secure reader and being where we need them to be by the end of Y1.

I hope she's settling in to her new school, making lots of new friends and feeling happy -thats honestly the most important thing at this stage!

Had this battle from reception at DCs school.

Was told it's about establishing phonetics and chunking etc. We dutifully complied and read the books each week but also did our own bedtime reading.

Year 1 we disengaged completely but we went under the radar as focus for teacher is on those who can't read, not those who can!

Year 2 (current) DD was assessed and reading/comprehension were beyond the reading scheme they were using (beyond expected level at end of year 6).

but...DD STILL gets upper end of Yr2 level books sent home weekly.

I don't mind as they are usually non-fiction so she is learning about something new. We have an unspoken agreement with teacher that DD reads the school books on her reading day with teaching assistant. Assistant makes comment in her log book (always 'excellent' with no follow up) and we do our own thing at home.

Home reading is much easier now, as we don't actually do very much other than get DD to read out loud (she reads a chapter to us at bedtime) and we check comprehension by asking what she has just read. Or we help ad-hoc with a word she's not sure about (was 'Prometheus' yesterday as she was reading 'Horrible Histories - Greek' in the back of the car).

Her reading has come on leap-and-bounds this year (has finally stopping insisting on reading everything out loud) and it's a joy to have a child who will sit quietly in the back of the car and read!

Occasionally we write in school log book 'DD read Beast Quest 25-30 over half term and is currently reading Goth Girl. Just so they know she is constantly reading outside of school. She prefers to read books for 7+ age group, rather than the books for 11+, as she is only 7. She just reads them very quickly so you need to have lots of books at hand! Don't worry too much about pushing into older books - they won't necessarily be interested in the themes.

Don't waste time butting heads with the school and get a library card (I order all Beast Quest series from the library otherwise I would be bankrupt)!

If the books at school are too easy then surely just get her books to read at home that she wants to read

That's what usually happens

Why is this even an issue

The school does what it does

And you do your thing at home like people have done for decades

DS was always miles ahead in his reading and writing and his school did put him in the G&T group but no idea what year

I had no idea what on earth they were reading at school because he kept himself busy at home learning what he wanted. Actually they read the Biff and Chip books. I had no idea re levels etc.

The bright kids just do don't they

They don't moan about things they just find a way around it and teach themselves whatever they're interested in

DS loved playing with his friends at school and everyone knew how good he was at maths

He chose to read lots at home but liked to read facts so would go online to read up about history a lot

By the time he was in Yr 6 he was reading GCSE maths books from the school library and given separate sheets of maths to do. As for books he just chose what he wanted from the library to read as they did at that stage and a bit earlier

It's hard to teach DC like my DS because there's nothing left to teach re the basic maths and English but of course there's all the science, music and arts that his school were amazing at and tons of other stuff. Their school was delightful and a state school. It was fun and they subtly created confident children from the shyest little ones in reception to yr 6. They all got so much from each other.

He's off to Uni later this year to study Pure Maths

They get to where they need to go