Why are people so anti ORT?

[seeker]

They are often funny, they are often anarchic, they show children lots of different ways of living, the pictures have lots of interest and detail, the vocabulary is lively - you can usually find one that has something to interest an individual child, they are proper stories - what's not to like?

When I think about the Janet and John type of books people of my generation had - ORT is in a different universe!

[imaginaryfriend]

That's just brilliant. Exactly what I needed. Thanks!

[Hulababy]

What I always wonder - there are so many dfferet reading schemes out there: jolly phonics, ORT, Ladybird phonics, adtbird keywords, Ginn, PM, Lighthouse, etc.

How do all the elevels fit together? How does the teacher know which books are the same reading standard? As clearly level 4 or one is not the same as level 4 of another.

[imaginaryfriend]

Good question Hula... one which I have no idea how to answer. It's a baffling puzzle to me.

... ummm ... mrz? yoo--hooo ....

[Hulababy]

DD brings home so many different types of books from different schemes. It is very clear to me that the levels don't match up number for number. So it baffles me how they do it, unless it is just professional judgement.

[Blandmum]

There are ways of working out the reading age. these methods vary, one to another, but they all take account of things like length of words, numbers of words in a sentence, and sentences in a paragraph.

There are charts that you plot the results on , and they will give you an approximate reading age

[Hulababy]

MB - that would make sense. Thanks

[mrz]

The newer reading schemes are using colour coding and are easier to "level" but there is a document available which has all reading scheme books and some "real" books organised into levels just a very long job organising books shelves which is probably another reason most schools stick with a single scheme.

www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Bands-Guided-Reading-Foundation/dp/0854737871?tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21
we use this one but there are different versions

www.thegrid.org.uk/learning/english/ks1_2/literacyhour/guidedread/bookbands.shtml
links to NC levels

[Hulababy]

Ah, thanks.

What a shame it is nly available to buy and not an onine document

[imaginaryfriend]

But how come the ORT level 6 overlap so many different colours in Rigby?

[ReallyTired]

This links shows how ORT links to book bands

ORT and book bands

I'm surprised how wide the gold book band which is supposely level 2B there is a huge difference between a stage 9 and stage 7 book.

[imaginaryfriend]

This is so helpful! So I've placed dd in band 6, orange.

[Blandmum]

if you want to work out the reading age you can use this

fry readability graph

[mrz]

Problem with that is not many of the early books have 100 words in the whole book never mind any passages I'm afraid. There are some reading tests available on line which give a reading age but the results can vary a great deal from test to test.