Do the coloured stickers on reading books mean anything?

[dollybird]

I assume they are for different levels of reading books. Does anyone know what order they go in? DS (6.9) and DD (5.6) have both been reading orange books for a while now - she seems to have the same book he did a couple of months later. She has come home with a dark blue/purple sticker book today although it is in the same set of books as her last one which was an orange book? (Orchard Colour Crunchies - Snow white (orange) and Jack & the Beanstalk (purple))

It sounds like Book Bands. Some schools have their own system, b8ut many subscribe to a national banding system.

They go in the following order:

Pink (approx nursery & reception)
Red

Yellow (Level 1)
Blue
Green
Orange

Turquoise (towards Level 2)

Purple (level 2)
Gold

White (level 2a-3)

We have stickers on our books, but it is our own labelling scheme.

islandofsodar - I didn't realise that the colours were a national scheme, when you say that purple is level 2 does that mean its the level expected at the end of keystage 1 ?

Yes, they relate to National curriculum levels but I don't know at what stage children are expected to reach those levels as my children don't do SATS. I think but am not 100% on this that the individual bands are supposed to relate to levels eg level 2c, 2a etc.

I found a table on the Times Ed website, not sure how accurate it is

Pink FS
Red FS
Yellow 1c
Blue 1c/1b
Green 1b
Orange 1a
Turquoise 1a/2c
Purple 2c/2b
Gold 2b/2a
White 2a
Lime 3c

think I will ask at parents evening next month. DS had his first chapter book last week (2 chapters!) and he seemed quite pleased to have a chapter book like some others in his class - it was still an orange sticker though..

are the 1's and 2's the school year?

The 1's and 2's are the level descriptors of the National Curriculum. So when children do SATS in years 2 and 6 they get a level they have achieved

Been on the NC website and childrenin Years 1 & 2 are expected to be working within levels 1-3 and have attained level 2 by the end of Year 2

In Years 3-6 they are expected to be working within levels 2-5 and to have achieved level 4 by the end of year 6.

Thanks for that, I'd always just assumed that the school used colours so that it wasn't so obvious when children were learning to read at different rates iykwim but its good to have a guide to progress.

as well as wide variations in the books within each level, there's also a wide variation of ability among children reading a particular level

I listen to a group of children read at my dcs' primary every week - these kids are in y3 and all allegedly on purple level - however one of them is almost a free reader, one is comfortable at this level and two are really struggling and none of them is actually as good a reader as my y1 dd who's coming home with green level books (and getting very frustrated at how easy they are0

Follow this link - it maps out most book schemes, so you can compare them and see where your DC are at.

this link

My son's school does book bands. I think there is a range of standards within a band so that some weeks a child might concentrate on decoding and other weeks they might concentrate on comprehension. I find the book band system strange, but my son's reading is moving forward and we go to the library as well.

It has to be remembered that just because a child can bark at print, doesn't necessarily mean they have understood what they have read.

It might be reasonable to have a child who is excellent at barking at print in the same group with a child who finds decoding harder, but has better comprehension skills. In 99% of cases teachers do know what they are doing.

Hiya, just to add in from the teaching perspective from KS1...there are different ways of banding books in different schools as mentioned. My school does colours and within each colour there are two to three numbers to show the level of the book. Our colours go
pink
red,
yellow
blue
green
orange
turquoise
gold
white
emerald

This is colours based on the PM Benchmark testing for assessments (not used by all schools, but by many to assess childrens reading using running records)

"It has to be remembered that just because a child can bark at print, doesn't necessarily mean they have understood what they have read" I think that this is a very important and true statement, it is really important that they comprehend what they have read, (this is a part of the KS1 SATS)

In reference to the levels within the national curriculum assessment scheme, there is W (some schools also use P levels) but this means working towards level one, then once you get within level one, there is three sub-levels, 1C, 1B and 1A. The NC expectation for year end for a child working at an average level in year one is a 1B, this is the same for level two (Year twos are expected to acheive this).
For KS1 SATS, a child can also acheive a level three if they are working above average

'Part of the KS1 SATS' - here, this should read 'part of the end of KS1 assessment', of which a test is a very tiny part. KS1 SATS don't exist as they once were.Even if a child demonstrated comprehension in the test, they wouldn't be assessed at the end of Y2 as being able to comprehend what they'd read unless they were completely secure and could do this as part of their every day work in the classroom.