Quick Read Write Inc question

[darlingsweetpea]

My daughter is in year 2 and has just failed to move from grey to comprehension, after being on grey books since Easter. Some of her friends have only done half a term, so she is feeling pretty rubbish.

My question is when they assess moving from grey to comprehension what level is the text they read? She has just read 85 words in the grey Please Pay attention within a minute. However, she reads about 60 words for the white Oxford Owl books. She doesn't stumble on any words, just names like Alvin, Raheem and Zara.

I think you need to read around 80 words a minute, but correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm dreading another half term of grey books, so eager to move her to comprehension!

Thank you

To move from Grey to comprehension, they needed to: know all the sounds, read words like invisible, comfortable, operation, remember, and read 80+ words a minute. The passage they read for this is from the comprehension level, not Grey. One passage used is about Chicken Licken who thinks the sky is falling down, and the other is about Anansi the spider who buys bananas for his family. They alternate each half term.

I would be checking with her teacher which of these three things she could/couldn’t do, so you know what to work on. Grey is on track for this point in Year 2, but if I were her teacher I’d be looking in to why she’d been there so long, as they should only be on Grey for one or two half terms.

They also have to read with intonation and expression.

@GetTheGoodLookingGuy this is so helpful and exactly what I needed to know. I'm going to be on thr case at school as it due to her reading speed and I'm so annoyed they haven't raised any issues with me until parents evening. I'm also going to ask what they plan to do to help as she knows all the sounds, so sitting through phonics is wasting her time.

@GetTheGoodLookingGuy do you know how strict teachers need to be with the reading piece. My daughter read the chicken licken story today. The first time she got around 55 words in a minute as she was reading the words carefully and after a few attempts she is up to 80 and her highest is 97. The only word she needed help with was snatched.

I feel her first attempt is always going to be slow, but once she gets into a rhythm she reads at the right speed. However, I'm not sure if this is allowed!

Fluency and intonation is such an important skill so plenty of practice with lots of different texts (don’t have to be challenging always) would be good

I think it varies from school to school, unfortunately. I know my reading leader has said it's fine to give them a second go at the passage, especially if they're close and haven't moved up a few times. I work with children in Year 3 and 4 who are still on RWI, and they are used to reading a text twice with me (they read, I write down words they've struggled with, we practice those words, they read again and try and improve their WPM) so I let them do that in the assessment too. I was unoffically doing this before I was told it was okay to - I'd leave the passage up for them whilst I went to get a timer/my drink and told them they could have a look at it whilst they're waiting. I think the reading lead also said our RWI consultant said you could assess children on a familiar text, rather than an unseen one. But your daughter's school might be following it to the letter so might only allow one read.

Thank you! We've always read, so we're continuing to read but now with the clock ticking! I'm going to speak to the teacher after half term and make a plan as she's reading the grey books without stopping and fully grasping them. Surely another half term on those books isn't helping anyone, she's so bored of them!

So get her books that she does enjoy! Reading should be about enjoyment, not being able to read a passage 9n a set number of seconds. It’s not a competition - no Y2 child should be bothering about what books their friends are on.

@Soontobe60 we read a number of stories every night for enjoyment so it's not all doom and gloom. I'm fully aware children need to be children.

We bought an excessive amounts of ORT books from Vinted and read them daily. My DD in year 2 has just finished Level 12 on the ORT and has moved on to free reading.

Grey is level 9 or gold book band. I would buy lots of whites and above from vinted and plough through them.

https://www.vinted.co.uk/items/7367371186-early-reader-oxford-reading-tree-level-10-white-book-band?referrer=catalog

https://www.vinted.co.uk/items/7430883901-13-chuckiers-fun-fiction-books?referrer=catalog

I found out the reason for her not progressing today...for the comprehension part of the test my DD got 5 words correct, and needed 8. She didn't get anything else wrong so its a bit gutting that for 3 words she has to repeat grey level for a third time.

I'm not sure what to do next, as she can read three syllable words but on that day she missed out by 3. It feels as though the school have ignored the fact she read 5 words, and got 100% on everything else. I'm feeling sad for her to be honest.

If they are doing online assessments, it is literally a case of “computer says no”. They can manually change the group, but I usually wouldn’t do that unless there was a specific reason they couldn’t do that part of the assessment, or they had missed one thing on a level but could otherwise be several levels higher.

To move up, she would need to read 8/10 correctly, so if she got 5, that’s 5 she didn’t get rather than 3. If I was her teacher, I’d be doing some practice of longer words with her and reassessing part way through this half term, but I can understand that a Year 2 child who is on track would not be a big priority for intervention right now when they’ll have Y2 children who didn’t pass the phonics screening last year who they’ll be pushing to pass the retake.

I know I live and breathe phonics at the moment, but it really isn’t the be all and end all. Your daughter is doing really well. She is exactly where she should be with her reading at this point of Y2. Provide her with plenty of other books to read, give the school ones a quick look over, and maybe practice some longer words with her if you want. I imagine the words tripping her up are the ones with suffixes: -able, -ible, -ence, -ance, -ant, -ent, -tion, -tious and -cious. One of the words on Assessment 1 (most likely the one your daughter did) is comfortable, which I think is a really mean one! I must admit if kids sounded out correctly and said “com-fort-uble” instead of “comf-ter-ble” I’ve marked it as correct..