ORT Read At Home - worth it?

[MrsDinky]

The Book People have got a set of 31 of these for £15 at the moment, DS is really enjoying his Chip and Biff books at school, (he's Yr 1 and comfortable at Level 4 at the moment). I get the impression Level 5 is where it gets quite a bit harder.

Has anyone tried these and are they useful? It says there are 5 levels, but at school the ORT has a lot more levels than that, I wondered how the two match up? Don't want to find that they are all too easy.

Thank you.

I think scheme books have a place at home at the sort of level of reading the OP refers to. I found this level quite difficult with DD - what had seemed to be simple toddler books I'd read to her turned out to have surprisingly difficult words when she tried to read them, and books that took two minutes for me to read go her were half an hour of eye-watering torture with her reading (well, more torturous for me tbh).

We had a few ORT Read At Home from a friend, and a set of ORT Songbirds, written by Julia Donaldson and a lot more readable than Biff et al. Plus I actually looked forward to a new ORT coming home. At the same time, we had Walker Stories for a bit more of a challenge, they were fairly excruciating until she came on a bit and started to sight-read a LOT more.

Now, after a term of ORT non-fiction (Fireflies) she's moved up a level and we're back to Biff, Chip and Kipper - she is delighted! I am ... ambivalent. But I do think there's a bit of an epiphany around stages 4 and 5 of ORT at which real books become much more of an option, which is lovely.

I just got these books delivered today! Mine are from the book people too.
My DS1 is 5 but doesn't go to school so I decided to get these books just to give us a wee push to start reading. I was feeling a bit lost. We read the first book this evening and my DS1 loved it! He already knew some of the words and quickly learnt a few more so is feeling very happy and confident.

Even if we end up bored and dropping them in 2 weeks I wont feel as if they were a waste of time or money.

Hey MrsD I dont have the CAT thing set up, so just email me

squish of course
jules_ashford @ yahoo. com

Dontcallmebaby that is SO true. DS has been doing so so well with his reading, that I said 'oooh lets get one of your stories out'-meaning Room on the Broom or Charlie & Lola or something and was suprised to realise that he could only read maybe one word per page... So he chose to go back to his ORT, which is fine by me.

Yes, it is hard to find non scheme books that are not too difficult at this stage. We've got a set of Miffy books, they are about the best ones we have found, luckily DS still likes them (shh, don't tell his friends).

We did a term of Level 2 Songbirds and hated them, DS was so happy to get back to Chip and Biff and has rattled through levels 3 and 4. I hear quite a few people at shcool say their DCs get stuck on level 5 for ages, also when I help with reading they seem to be quite a step up from level 4.

"DCs get stuck on level 5 for ages"

That's because there are twenty-seven MILLION of them.

Oh, good, something to look forward to then...

I'm interested in Mz's thread on graded real book lists but can't find it..could someone provide a link to it please

borrow them from the library. then your not stuck with the same ones all the time.