Year 1 reading levels / book bands

[Parkrunmum10]

Can someone who teaches explain what the level book bands year 1 should aim for

to put this into context our daughter is apparently in the 5th group of 9 in her year - so 4 groups are working at a lower level. This is fine she is a clever and able imo child who is august birthday and therefore lacks some focus so balances out her ability to make a vaguely average child for the year. All good / expected.

however her group is still only reading book band red level 2 books. Occasionally a yellow level 3. The books have progressed in complexity from last year but the book band has been the exact same since before Easter in reception.

isnt this a bit behind where you'd expect your middle group to be towards the end of the first term of year 1?

from what I've seen online the target is to get them to yellow / band 3 at the end of reception : most seem to align with this progress target chart:
cdn.oxfordowl.co.uk/2019/07/19/13/52/18/160/OxfordLevelsAndBookBands.png

if she's behind that's fine she can catch up / progress at her own pace but I'm just trying to judge if she is a band behind the target for the year below why the school thing she is doing great and is middle of the pack - are this year group / cohort just a distribution a bit lower than normal or something or should I be concerned about the teaching / provision

also is it normal to stay on a book band for a full 2 terms at this level - I see all my friends kids in other schools moving bands / levels at least once a term - admittedly I don't know what scheme they all use but it seems to be a mixture

her school use the biff and kipper and biff and kipper floppy phonics ones but we have had the odd songbird and rwi one along the way 🫣🤣

the book bands line up with this: https://earleylearningsupport.weebly.com/uploads/2/8/9/6/28966585/oxfordreadingtree.pdf

My little boy is in Year 1, born in September. He's currently in yellow group and in his last teachers meeting in October they said they don't expect children to be at that stage until Easter time year 1. So I would say your daughter is where she should be at this point for reading. When I asked about moving up a group they said they only move them up when they are completely comfortable with understanding the phonics in that group. He has been in yellow group since the end of reception I believe. Also they can skip reading group colours sometimes, so my little boy told me, so don't worry. 😄

Hi, my daughter is in year 1 but older (Feb born). She is on level 5 (Green). Finished reception on Green A and is still on Green C. I feel progress has been slow and she only gets moved up when I write in her reading log “DD is finding the books very easy, please can you see if she is ready to move up to the next level”.

We don’t have reading groups at our school so I don’t have much insight on where she places, but I suspect it’s at the top end (no doubt there will be a couple of children who are way ahead though). My elder DD helped read with some of the children in reception who were struggling a bit towards the end of last year and told me they were all on pink or red. I don’t feel like yellow is therefore behind, particularly for an August born.

I think some schools are looking for perfection before moving them up.

Do the colours tally with this chart?

My child is a fairly good reader in year 1 she’s just gone onto blue. I would expect for them to move up more than one colour in two terms yes!

Mine is on green. She's been there since may half term.

Mine is the same. Getting frustrating!

thanks
what reading scheme is it they use?
and what phonics are they at for yellow band?
my daughters group are still doing set 1 sounds as a recap from rwi as she didn't get them all right at the start of term assessment in September

Yes I think so or similar
she flew through lilac and pink and I think moved to red around March last year
but as they use books that don't align with the RWI progress I feel she's stuck on red now as her group had to redo a set of graphemes from reception
progress has been slow but the last 3-4 books she's had in my opinion seem much more challenging (more words per page, more pages etc) but are still red level so there is progress book wise just not bands / levels wise!

See that's absolutely miles ahead of her year group
even the top group are still on light blue
so this is why I don't understand her school seem to imply red level was average when the scheme say otherwise

(can't talk to the school they are a nightmare we've raised it before and they shut the conversation down very quickly and twist it into us doing something wrong)

That's it though
she isn't on yellow she's still on red now in the latter half of year 1 term 1
She occasionally has a yellow book but that never looks much different/ more difficult than the red ones to be honest
we've never been told she's struggling at all every single conversation implies she's doing fine/ meeting all expectations etc
she never had any remedial / extra reading etc to imply any problems and as I said they've just said she's in the middle reading group in the year -
yet she's still on red books

now don't get me wrong the complexity and length of the books is vastly different from her first red level book but I just don't get why those Books are then in the same band in that case!

Please try not to fixate on books bands. They're typically outdated now. Yellow use to be the aim by the 3nd of Reception, but many would still be on red and that's ok. Schools generally don't follow them now as it's all about children being exposed to books containing the key sounds they're working on, rather than books of a particular colour.

My biggest concern with this school's approach to reading would be if they're still supplementing with Biff, Chip and Kipper, which include many non-decodable words. Floppy's Phonics is fine, but if they are sending home the retro Oxford Reading Tree stories about Biff, Chip and Kipper, that would definitely be frowned upon by Ofsted. Schools should now be using books which align with their phonics scheme (which comes at a huge expense, at a time when money is so tight).

My own school don't do 'book bands' any more, we send home books which progress through the units of our chosen scheme. The books have been organised in such a way that ensures their target sounds are covered in that book. They're not exposed to sounds they haven't been taught yet, and therefore can't decode themselves. So they may appear to jump around in terms of the old book bands.

Tbh I wouldn't worry too much about book bands if you have been told DC is doing fine. Schools are very tied into their current scheme and will make sure children are at the correct level by the end of the year. However the scheme books can be pretty dull and progress can feel snail paced. I'd read the books from school with your DC, then scoot down to the library to let them choose some they are interested in. Exposure to lots of different kinds of books won't harm their school reading progress, but it will feed into their enjoyment of reading and from there into their writing.

It does sound like slow progress.

Our school uses monster phonics which I have to say I think is the best one I’ve come across! They then use the other types of books with book band colours on as extra books to read.

The Biff and Chip ones have a lot more words on the page than the same band in some other schemes (songbirds for example)

I think the banding for the lower bands depends which sounds are in the words rather than how long the sentences are

Thanks this is actually incredibly reassuring
we've discussed at length with the teacher re the biff and kipper being awful (stories are fine but as you say containing sounds she hasn't done)
funnily it's by reading these she's picked up a lot of the set 2 sounds like ee and ay and even advanced sounds like ow for cow as we've had to explain it to her - but I'll admit I read pre phonics so haven't a scooby do about teaching her it right
the school said about having their own scheme cobbled together and they made some bs about biff and kipper being great as it aligns with what they've learned but then 1-2-1 the class teacher said they weren't good but they were what they had

Thanks we do this
she has lots of books at home and has read some lovely nursery rhymes and fact books with help etc and we do visit library every half term holiday to browse and join the guided reading group they do
unfortunately it's not open weekends our local library to get books regularly for her but we have lots of old ones from my mum who teaches primary so she brings home books they're throwing away at school etc
we read to her every day and she gets books as gifts etc so she has a great range of texts and styles to pick from plus a tonne of hand me downs from my sisters older twins

My daughter’s school uses floppy phonics. They will only send home books when they’ve taught the sounds in those books. So my daughter finished reception on yellow, and moved to blue in early October of y1. They will not move anyone on ti harder books until they’ve taught all the sounds covered in those books. This could be what it is? (As far as I know, pretty much the whole class is on the same level, bar maybe a few who really struggle.)

They send home books which are a mix of schemes (presumably can’t afford to buy all the floppy phonics books for 60 kids) but to be fair the sounds in them tally with what I know has been taught so far.

i find it extremely frustrating for able readers. My daughter is reading short chapter books at home yet faffing around in class reading books she could have read before starting school! Such a rigid system, I’m sure it benefits those who are struggling but the lack of flexibility for able readers frustrates me.

Yes it is
she's so frustrated
they did the phonics assessment on the first day back after summer and she didn't focus and they thought she'd forgotten 2-3 sounds and they put her in a group repeating that full set of sounds so she's had repeated spellings she did last year
then she's lost confidence and I think that's impacted her performance in class and in her phonics group so now oddly she's making more errors than she did all last year
also she wasn't sounding out at the end of reception and over the summer unless it was a new word but hearing the kids in her group sound out she's doing that again now as "they get lots of praise when they do" so I think it's like she's gone back a full term and I can see why she's frustrated
I can also see why from what the teacher has seen this term they think she's in the right group
fingers crossed they move on soon

the other complication is we are in wales who don't do the end of year 1 phonics test so they don't have the pressure to push them along so o think they're allowing it to plod slowly

Book bands and school reading books used to drive me mad 😆 I say used to, a couple of years in to DC1's primary schooling it became clear it's not all that individualised and more about school box ticking. She was on whatever colour flogging the same book at school, despite being able to read fluently - because she read whatever wanted at home. Teen now and I still have to prize books out of her hand to get her to do anything else! History repeated itself in a different school with DC2. Different scheme, more rigid school "rules", same box ticking. I was/am much more inclined to shrug and let it waft on by as we fill the bookshelves at home and are often to be found in the library.

I think you just need to concentrate on instilling a love of reading and stories, and the school phonics will sort itself out.

It does sound very slow progress. The bottom group in DD’s class started yr1 on red and the top on orange. DD started and then spent forever on green. The teacher said a lot of the class had forgotten what they had learnt in reception.
I found it quite frustrating as DD was reading chapter books at home, I can imagine that was the same for a lot of the top 2 groups.

@Parkrunmum10 I really wouldn't pay much attention to book bands at school if you're reading with her at home. It's just to give them a good foundation of phonics. My year 1 child is "officially" on turquoise band I think? But at home he's reading far beyond that. Just keep encouraging her to read more complex books at home.

Honestly, if school aren't being great, I'd look for a set of songbirds up to level 6, go through them at home then they've got most of the key arsenal to read normal picture books and from there you can fill in the gaps as they go.
With first DC we got really frustrated with him being on level 3 or something for most of year 1. We got the songbirds ones after months of reading L3 fluently and not understanding what the problem was.
It turned out it was logistical and nothing to do with DS not being competent on that level, it was a new school and they hadn't bought the higher level books yet. Once they bought them he went through several levels in quick succession, probably because they didn't have many books at each level yet not because he was particularly brilliant either.

DC2 just learned to read from listening to her brother and the songbirds before she started preschool, so that saved any bother about reading levels.

Aah sorry, I misread the part when you said she was still getting red books. I wouldn’t worry too much. There were a large number of children still on red at the end of reception in my daughter’s year. I think often a child will suddenly just “get” reading and fly through and yours is still very young!

I’d be a bit more concerned that the school is limiting her a bit by only focusing on already taught sounds and not learning anything new (what do I know though as I’m not a teacher!).

My DD’s school follows Essential Letters and Sounds and for that it looks like there is a set timetable of the phonemes and graphemes they should be taught each week. I understand the whole class is taught these together and then I imagine there are intervention groups for children who need a little more help to recap on other sounds. Hopefully your school is still teaching her all the new sounds as well so when it clicks she’ll be well placed to fly through.

I’m suprised they haven’t learn ow yet, ours did that in Reception.
If you can get a subscription to monster phonics I’d recommend them as you can access it online!

They're following their own reading book scheme but vaguely follow RWI for the phonics and ow for cow is one of the last sounds they cover

not ow blow the snow which is in set 2

even in my mums school no one has done that sound ow how now brown cow in reception most get to it at the very end of year 1 or maybe even year 2.

I'll have a look at monster phonics but don't want to confuse her

I'm very lucky my mum and my sister in law are both primary teachers who do phonics rwi so they help when we visit and do bits with her and can do more if ever needed

my mum said she is just a touch below target in her school based off the sounds in class but that she knows enough from at home to put her at target but she did say wales are a bit behind due to having an whole extra year to get them ready for the national ohonics assessment so that's why they aren't concerned

exactly this it's not the book levels per say as to be fair the last 5-6 books I can tell are much harder / longer and challenging for her so they're the right level for her (even if behind the internet targets - that's fine as you say she's a young 5!)
it's the phonics that's grinding my gears 🫣🤦‍♀️
she has had to redo all her set 2 sounds as in the test day 1 of term she got 2 wrong so had to be in a group of people learning them from scratch so she had to redo cvc spellings for 2-3 weeks then 1 sound a week that she'd done before and now they're recapping so she is totally bored and she already has focus issues so this has just made that worse so now she's making errors and I can see why the teachers think she's not ready to move on but she is - if you get me 🫣🤷‍♀️
we to be honest have just started doing our own thing at home now if she does the spellings we do them once maybe twice in the week as she knows them