Reading books too easy?

[Maxiebaby]

DD (Y1, age 5, 6 in April) finally finished all the ORT stage 6/silver/grey banded books at school and been put up a level by the TA (as run out of books, not because able).
First book home in this stage was an owls book (ie not one of the easier first core books) and she has read it effortlessly without stumbling or needing to sound out on any word and with great expression/comprehension. Teacher describes her as a 'fluent' reader who will only struggle with the odd word.

My question is, is this too easy and the lack of challenge an issue, or is there a benefit for DD in reading at this level of decoding/comprehension? Wondering whether to raise with teacher or avoid being pushy mum (again!).

Dont care what stage she is on so long as she is learning and enjoying it, so am not being competitive about this, just dont want her bored and unchallenged. DD will spend about a term at this level once we have tackled all the additional ORT books and non-shceme banded books at this stage, and if she finds it easy already I am concerned she will be turned off by reading such a high volume of easy books.

Does your DD read with expression? Follow the punctuation? Can she look at the pictures and discuss and anticipate the story, or come up with alternate story lines? Does she notice rhyming words and other word patterns?

It may be that the teacher is looking for your DD to do a little more than just read/decode the words. Have a chat with her teacher to ask what 'extra' reading activites your DD can do to keep her interest - suggest that perhaps her reading level should be reviewed at half term instead of doggedly ploughing through every book in the stage come hell or high water.

And if nothing is forthcoming from the school - visit your library and choose your own books for reading and sharing and place less emphasis on the OTR stuff.

Or the most likely reason is they have a policy of just making everyone plod through every book.
Definitely raise it with the teacher.She is paid to manage your DDs education

Definitely go and ask the teacher about it but don't go in all guns blazing as it were. Maybe the owls book was a fortunate choice; your DD may know many of the words if the class have studied owls as part of the Y1 science topic on light and dark.

There is more to reading that simply being able to decode but it's good advice to ask how you can help your daughter to become an even better reader and to check that she has been put onto the correct level.

Tread carefully, but don't take the "well she might be decoding but isn't understanding" argument at face value. It is often true, but if your dd reads a story at that level and can talk about what happens and what she thought of the story it's not. I rememebr being told I didn't understand a fairly complicated book at the age of seven and just not true. Didn't crush me, so won't be too over dramatic but did feel a bit patronised (didn't call it that at the time!). Reading schemes are only a way to best manage different reading abilities and experience in a class situation. They aren't the only books a child could or should be reading so echo the go to the library argument. Decoding only isn't harmful in itself, but if dd is then it might stop her getting the most out of the reading scheme because she might not want to go back to previously read books. Mind you that's only because there's often a culture amongst kids of "who's reading what?"... If she gets library books she could decode or comprehend to her heart's content!

My DD in year 1 (age 6) at a similar level.... however from stage 6 onwards now much less books per stage (DD's school only seems to have songbirds & biff and chip books, and the stage 6 B&C books) - only a few weeks later after being put on stage 6 (after I complained see below) she is now on stage 7 (we get 6 books a week).

I have started to notice in the stage 7 books that although she can read them fluently (and rarely doesn't know a word) she doesn't always get the finer points of the story.

She reads one per night and they have 32 pages each. She can recount the story in a good amount of detail, but there are jokes/puns etc that she doesn't get, and she had work to do on pronounciation so it doesn't bother me that she knows all the words.

If however your DD knows all the words, and reads with good pronounciation and gets all the minor points of the stories then go and talk to teacher, but leave it a couple of weeks to see what the next few books are like.

eg one of the ORT level 6 owls books was about "rotten apples" - had to explain to DD that the horse at got "drunk" from eating rotten apples which had fermented.... in a book called the motorway had to explain that because the children had found rare flowers it meant that the builders would no longer be allowed to dig up field to build motorway because it was important to protect the wild flowers.

I did speak up last term when she was on stage 4, but that was because the stories were clearly too easy as well. Now that the stories are longer, and there is always something to explain I am happy with the level.

How does the level compare to the books she is reading at home? if she is reading proper chapter books then its probably too easy....

I would be speaking to the school anyway about the way in whhc they order the books. Am I misunderstanding you or have they not been through all the books they have and put them in a logical reading order. DS1 is a strong reader for his age and is racing through the books but it takes a good while to go up a level since they do the level 7 core books, then the first set of more level 7 books, then the second set of more books, then the owls, then some very old fashioned non ORT ones that are in the same book band etc all before moving onto the next level.

He understands what he is reading but often because we'll talk about the things that crop up. The rotten apples one was a good example. He's 4 and has a vague ideas of what getting drunk is but didn't make the link between rotten apples and the horse being drunk. A few weeks ago he had one called the joke machine and didn't get all the jokes.

If she's being asked to read more books in the band then that's understandable and she will probably be a stronger reader for the practice but if they are giving her books at a lower band then that's silly.