Leap from ORT 9 to Horrid Henry novel, dd struggling (Y1)

[imaginaryfriend]

DD's doing great with her reading. She's in Y1 and has been reading ORT stage 9 and other reading schemes of similar difficulty. We've got a big range of other books at home for her to read including some first Corgi chapter books.

On the last day of term she was given a Horrid Henry chapter book to read over Christmas and she's really struggling with it. There are many words she can't read on every page such as 'circumstance', 'tendency', etc. It's got such a hugely different range of vocabulary to anything she's read so far.

Anyhow what I wondered is should we plough on with it? It's rather a painful process. Or should I put a note in the reading book to tell the teacher it's too hard for dd? I'm assuming she thought dd was up to it as she wouldn't have given it to her otherwise. How much of a challenge should a reading book be?

My son is also in year one and also on ORT stage 9 - he can read Enid Blyton stuff like the Wishing Chair with no problem from the perspective of the words and understanding but in terms of stamina, he just doesn't have it. I suspect the same is true for any chapter book that doesn't have lots of pictures so ORT is just fine.

If she is finding a lot of the words hard, then the level is too high. As others have said, you want her to keep her enthusiasm for reading so I'd definitely ask the teacher to drop the level a bit. Why not go for a higher ORT level?

Amelia Jane
Teddy Robinson
My Naughty Little sister
The World According to Henry
Paddington Bear
Olga Da Polga

...DD reads one page, then I read the next, and we get through them like a house afire!

I hate ORT, it does not prepare children for complex sentence structure well enough.

Well, as I mentioned earlier, dd doesn't tend to bring ORT books home. I think they read them in guided reading at school some times and occasionally she brings them home. I just used the level 9 as a guide to dd's reading standard as I know it's recognised by lots of people.

So she's always had exposure to different types of writing. She just seemed to find HH particularly tricky for some reason.

My daughter is on ORT9 st school and year 2...her school has taken things very slowly nd the children tend to have to read nearly every book in each stage...but they do read in school everyday ...which is good.

i found a lovely set of books in Tesco's by Holly Webb...my daughter;s currently reading Ginger the Stray Kitten.....it's in chapters and it's just the right level...there are the odd words she needs help with but 99% is fine...maybe worth having a look.