Oxford Reading Tree

[ihatebojo]

Teaching in Switzerland. Mostly EASL students, aged 6-12, levels from non existent English to bilingual.

My Canadian colleague HATES the Oxford reading tree books and I love them. Sadly today when we were discussing them, I got a bit flustered and so stayed quiet.

I am trying to work out the pros and cons so that I can try to help him embrace the system.

Can I ask for your thoughts on ORT?

As a reading scheme I quite like the illustrations and expressive faces of characters (including Floppy).
The stories are good below stage 5.
From Stage 6 up the themes are somewhat abstract and I have found that students struggle with comprehension.
The scheme books are not decodable to my knowledge (not matched to a SSP/phonic programme).

Thank you!

Much as I love the ORT stories( The great race with the bears and the drunken horse episode being particular favourites!), in terms of teaching reading they are not an appropriate scheme for delivering phonics based programmes- which we should be following in England! You may not have the same constraints but, if you want to follow a structured reading programme, there are better options!

I'm at a similar school to you. We use RWI instead and send those books home. I will sometimes send ORT home in addition later in the year (1st Grade) but the words don't match the sounds our kids know at the lower stages.
I quite like the Project X ones.
For some reason, our German department use the German ORT editions. The children get to choose without guidance which book they want to read. They read them without anyone checking their comprehension and the way they are set up doesn't match the way German reading is taught at all. Now that drives me nuts.

Thank you. I lost the battle, when I arrived today all the books had been removed from the box, and mixed into the reserve.

Without discussion.

But that's a while other thread.

A lot of schools are getting rid of all their old ORT and other non-decodable reading scheme books because it's not how we teach reading in Reception and KS1. Most schools are investing in decodable reading schemes - some are awful, some have produced some lovely books which are far more contemporary and appealing than ORT.

Could you please give me some examples? Am not in the UK and am trying to keep up to date...

Big Cat Collins

I like the Big Cat for Little Wandle books. Also the new Twinkl 'Rhino Readers' books are actually pretty decent.

I don't like the RWI books (but we're not a RWI school) or the TTS decodable Letters and Sounds books that my school bought because they were cheaper than others!

Most schools are buying the decodable readers that match their phonics schemes. 'Fidelity to the scheme' is the Ofsted catchphrase at the moment

Thank you!!! I have a Twinkl account so shall check that out.

Pearson bug club books are quite nice too.

ORT just doesn’t match the way we are supposed to teach phonics anymore. Some of them are a bit problematic by today’s standards as well.

I am a little sad though as have such fond memories of them from my own time at school - they suddenly replaced the terribly dry diet of ‘Roger red hat’ and it was wonderful!

Our school P1 and OP2 classes recently stopped using ORT in favour of Ridley Star (I think) or some very decodable books. As they rely on lots of phonics the stories make no sense. My son thought they were absolute rubbish. I found that some of our struggling readers, who were still not reading by the end of P1, did really well on the ORT Stage 1 and 1+ books - we never had a pupil leaving P2 unable to read using these. However these have now been sidelined in favour of the phonic books.

I agree that some of the upper stories are quite odd.

Roger Red Hat! Peter and Jane ! memories.😊

There are some excellent phonics schemes out there with genuinely good stories. Phonics really isnt that limiting, no more so than early key word focussed "stories" which are often terribly repetitive (reading champions pink & red level are especially bad for this) Pearson Bug Club Phonics I really like - there are stories at several levels featuring a boy called Sid which are popular with children. Collins BigCat phonics are also ok.

Beware of old titles fudged into phonics schemes. To fit with the requirement to be "decodable" it often means short/easy/boring old look and say books relabelled as a harder level because they contain a sound or spelling not covered til a later phonics phase.

ORT really aren't that great and definitely not the best on phonics.