oxford reading tree levels

milliebear00001

Just another small thought. You mention your daughter is now beginning to use expression in her reading. I would say that for a reader on turquoise level readers, that's quite late (although not late at all in view of her age!) I would suspect your daughter is an excellent decoder, but perhaps does not yet have some of the wider reading skills that might merit a swift move through the colour bands. I imagine her teacher wants to see her develop her wider reading skills, before pushing her recognition and decoding skills further (which is all a move up the colour bands would realistically do).

It sounds like she's doing fine to me. The main thing is that she enjoys books and wants to read. Try not to get too bogged down by the rest of it.

pandora205

http://www.oup.com/oxed/pdf/ORTReadingAges.pdf

It#s a great reading scheme for most children, though not particularly structured in terms of phonic skills as it focuses on a natural language approach. Most adults enjoy the humour too - and there's lots to discuss so good for comprehension.

However.... as the posters above have said, don't rely too heavily on a reading scheme in home reading. There is some great children's fiction out there - and it's never too early to dip into it.

Here is a useful website for a bookshop run by a very knowledgeable librarian that gives advice on the best:
http://www.ncbconline.net/NCBC_Shop/PersonalFrameset.lasso

elljay20

thanks for all the really helpful advice, i suppose i should just not obsess about it and keep doing what we're doing. we do visit the library weekly and read all sorts so we'll just keep on! tanks to all that replied.

galvanizersbaby

milliebear00001 wrote: »

Just another small thought. You mention your daughter is now beginning to use expression in her reading. I would say that for a reader on turquoise level readers, that's quite late (although not late at all in view of her age!) I would suspect your daughter is an excellent decoder, but perhaps does not yet have some of the wider reading skills that might merit a swift move through the colour bands. I imagine her teacher wants to see her develop her wider reading skills, before pushing her recognition and decoding skills further (which is all a move up the colour bands would realistically do).

It sounds like she's doing fine to me. The main thing is that she enjoys books and wants to read. Try not to get too bogged down by the rest of it.

Thanks for posting Milliebear - it helps me to understand the reading scheme a little better from a teachers point of view
My DS (just turned 7 and started Year 2) has been a slow reader and is currently on level 5 which is below what he should be for his age.
However recently his current teacher is reading Roald Dahl stories with the class and he has taken a big interest in reading these with me at home and is now coming on leaps and bounds.
DD (5) is also on level 5 reading books and has just started to use expression so what you are saying makes a lot of sense.

I have felt quite desperate in the past with DS as last year his Year 1 teacher really did feel that there was a problem with his reading and I got very bogged down with trying to make it happen for him.
I wish now that I had focused more on reading the books we already had and just enjoying reading together

catpaws99

Sounds like you are doing the right things. My poor DD only gets a new book every other week because she is in a large class and there isn't enough teachers/TAs to listen to reading. It's quite frustrating because she is quite bright so we have to just do more library visits etc outside of school.

gairlochgal

Just to concur with a lot of the above comments - different reading scheme though. My DD1 showed signs of being gifted and talented in literacy from very early and her infant school were pretty ferocious about taking her through the reading scheme and not skipping too many chunks as they wanted her to experience the different types of writing the scheme covered.

At beginning of year 2 they offered to take her out of the scheme and I opted to keep her in it as I wanted her to feel the same as everyone else bringing home a book from the scheme every day. Was a good decision with hindsight as it forced her to read all kinds of books she would not have selected in the library. I remember a whole series of books about the history of sports that did her and my heads in but we gritted our teeth and read them and it has all stood her in good stead. She was the only child to complete the reading scheme and to this day she's proud of that achievement.

By 7 she had been exposed to loads of different styles of information and fiction writing from the scheme and I think it was a great investment in her base knowledge. She's now in year 7 and going strong.

HRV

As a foundation stage /Y1 teacher I have used ORT schemes and others, whilst ORT are lovely stories I agree they are quite limited- have you asked the school if they have any other schemes they could suppliment ORT with- ORT now make non fiction books that are all book banded (colour stages) and levelled (numeric levels).
If not I'm afraid it will be down to you as others have suggested.

As a comment to another post, about only having book changed once every 2 weeks, I would request that school send you 2 books at a time, I have done this in the past (with children who I know read regularly at home (although this isn't many of the kids at my school ) when I have had 30 kids in Y1 and no class room support (TA or LSP)