My daughter (aged 6) is a very competent reader and the books she's reading in school are much easier than her actual level. This was acknowledged by her teacher at the last parents' evening. Her justification for leaving her where she is was twofold: 1) By putting her on the free reader section now she'd not see the progression as she completes year 1 and 2 as there's just one shelf. 2) So she experiences a wide range of texts e.g. poetry and playscripts albeit on an easy level.

I supported this decision as she does like to move on to "the next box" of books and experiencing a wide range of texts can only be beneficial to her.

However, there is one series of books which is a very old set [NEW WAY] and does not use standard grammatical conventions i.e. speech marks are non existant. Some "sentences" are truncated, being a phrase rather than a sentence and some are started with And, But, With.

I've expressed my concerns on this set before to get a "No problem. They are very oldfashioned" response but now my daughter is being made to read them again (at a higher level). Having aired my concerns again and even sharing my daughters comments that they are "naughty" because "you shouldn't start a sentence with And" and her comments that "they are hard to read properly without speech marks" (Which personally I agree with) I've got the response that "I really feel (child's name) has to tackle lots of different types of texts including old-fashioned books that are not set out in the usual way" It goes on to say that if child reads ahead she will be able to identify speach even without the speech marks and "Other children are on this set and are not experiencing the same problems". I'm invited in for a chat if I want.

I've been told that K is "streets ahead" of the others in her class when it comes to reading so why is she on the same set? She is not experiencing "problems", just finding it awkward to figure out who's saying what when there's an exchange of conversation. (AS I did too) She reads fluently with expression and this was throwing her off with the "voices". Also, her writing does not parallel her reading yet and her teacher has said that although there's no cause for concern in this area she's surprised that someone who reads so well is finding it harder to use full stops and sentences accurately in her writing. So my argument is how is reading books of this kind a benefit to her?

Being a primary school teacher myself, in training we were told that we shouldn't just use a reading scheme per se but should use it carefully and ensure the texts were appropriate. Personally I wouldn't give these books the light of day in my classes. They seem to repeat a lot of the stories she's read before anyway "Little Red Hen" and "Chicken Licken / Henny Penny" being favourites. I don't want to be an annoying pushy mum or tell the teacher her job. She's only young and been teaching only a few years but is generally a very good teacher. I also know what it feels like to be in her position but I took parent's concerns seriously too. So what do I do? Ignore it and let my daughter read whatever the teacher gives her from school and supplement with better books at home or stand my ground and push for her not to read these books?

Please help me mull this over. Any advice from teachers or parents who've experienced similar welcomed.

I have a son who experienced very similar problems! I spent quite a lot of time in school reading with other children and so was able to have open and honest discussions with the teachers. In year 1 my son was moved onto free reading, but I have constantly had to provide reading material from home. Although expensive, I do not have a problem with this - it is a real privelege to have a child who has found reading so easy!

I agree and am prepared to do this, especially as we have a good library but I get the feeling that the teacher is digging her heals in a bit and it perhaps trying to exert her control/authority...

In addition I wpuld love to help in school but am not in a position to do so now having a young son and no other source of child care at appropriate times. I am also aware that my comments have been made through the reading record book, as we are encouraged to, so far and so have probably been read by other mums before the teacher. I'm not entirely comfortable with this and anything further would be private.

Regarding the books not using speech marks, etc. It's true, some older books don't use them, or at least not all the time. I noticed that when reading Jane Eyre: speech marks were only used in certain contexts. Also, in British printed texts sometimes speech marks are not closed: if there is a long monologue speech marks will be opened at the start of a new paragraph, without having been closed at the end of the preceeding one. It is also not grammatically incorrect to start a sentence with "And" or even "But", so long as the sentence is constructed appropriately around that. Sentences are started with "And" or "But" in many classic works, just as an explanation mark or a question mark does not always mean the end of a sentence, and it is not always wrong to use a comma before "and". These were all things I was surprised at when I started reading classics, but in the end I found it fascinating and could not help but try and incorporate some of these examples into my own writing, as well as trying to learn how to use colons and semicolons correctly (I am sure I often make mistakes with these!).

I do not really see a problem per se with your daughter being introduced to the intricacies and mysteries of the English language, where rules are made to be broken, as if she is an advanced reader, she will certainly learn about it eventually.

However, there are two things that concern me: firstly, the rigidity with which these rules are taught in schools: if she learns from her books that it is alright to start a sentence with "And", and then tries to use it in an essay, she will be marked down. I can not imagine a six year old having the nerve or knowledge to say to her teacher "well, Dickens did it!", I remember as a teenager using a slang term (not a rude word!) within the context of direct speech, in a short story. I was penalised for using slang, and my teacher did not care about my argument that the character would not have used the proper term, and it was appropriate to the tone to use the slang term. Secondly, the fact that the books your daughter is reading are not challenging her, and are holding her back. In my experience, this often happens in schools, simply because it's too much work to give one child extra work! I was reading "Watership Down" as a six year old, and proper history books as a nine year old, and remember in first year at secondary being presented with the first/second year reading list, which contained books such as "Supergran" - our class reader in P5! So a friend and I went to the English teacher and politely asked if we could have the third/fourth year list. She was not happy at all with the request, and asked us if we had read the harder books on the back page (Watership Down and Tom Sawyer) and would not believe us when we said we had! It was as if she felt we were insulting her and were just trying to cause trouble. She refused to give us the list, and even the local library would not let us borrow anything that was not in the children's section as we were under fourteen!

So I think, though you could have a word with the teacher, probably your best bet would just be to read books together at home that are more her level (she's six: she should still be young enough to enjoy reading with you!)

And apologies if my post is not very helpful: it's really just a bit of a rant!

It certainly wasn't a rant and I appreciate the time you've taken to respond.

I think you are probably right. She does enjoy reading with me AND without me too and whatever and wherever she can.

I have no problem with her reading any type of texts or written in different or old fashioned ways it's just these are badly written. The sentences starting with And, But and With weren't written in the correct fashion to justify it. They were phrases not sentences. Another example was "NO, not a princess." Is that a sentence?

To achieve a level 3 in their writing at Y2 they need to write using proper speech conventions and proper sentences. I don't think these books encourage that in any way and so, in my mind, are not suitable for ANY y1 child and probably are less helpful to the less advanced child who won't ignore these errors.

However, I feel an attempt to explain this to the teacher would probably be futile. She's young and won't want to back down, especially to another teacher - I know I wouldn't have. I also feel she may be covering herself for an infamiliarity of the books. Honestly, I didn't know what was in every book on MY bookshelf when I was teaching. There was too many other things to do.

I suspect you've hit the nail on the head with this thought.

My elder daughter was an excellent reader and in year 1 the teacher encouraged and supported her by giving her lots of material to read. Year 2 I found myself in a similar situation to yourself, I'm not sure if it's the same series of books but one of the texts she was given promoted smoking. The teacher couldn't understand my concern over this at all.

I wonder if the local library might be a better source of material for your child.

Probably - She read a 7 chapter (easy read) book last night in the absence of a new book from school. And much enjoyed it. It challenged her a little more with multi-syllabic words too. That was from the library. I'm going to go see what else I can find. However I think I might try to explain my issues in person to the teacher too but accept whatever the result is knowing I can find her better reading material at home.

Promoting smoking!!!! I'd be definitely speaking to the head in these circumstances!!!! Am I an awful over-assertive mum? Hope not. I just care what's best for MY child! As I'm sure did you.

Given that she's invited you in for a chat, I don't think you can assume that she's not taking your concerns seriously.
Why not take up the invite and go in for a chat with her? It's probably easier to deal with the issue by having a conversation about it, rather than passing messages back and forth via a notebook.


She's not you though, so maybe she'll react differently.
You should at least go in for that chat and give her a chance. If she has no intention of dealing with your concerns, why would she bother to invite you?

My girls were also able readers but generally I never bothered too much about what was happening about reading in school as they both did enough reading outside of school.

I appreciate what you are saying but it wasn't exactly an invite - quote:"If you still want to come in and chat about this let me know". It felt dismissive rather than the "Please come in to talk about this."

I've decided however that I will talk to her but unfortunately it was another teacher covering her PPA time today. Hope to see her tomorrow.

Can I just clarify that I wouldn't have wanted to back down but have given in to parental wishes if I thought they were right or had a valid point. I always conceded with a "Well let's try that shall we. After all, you know your child best but maybe we can review how things are going in (a set time period)"



Because it then appears that she's taken my points seriously but in my past experience (from a teaching perspective) sometimes these "invites" basically get the parent off your back as they choose not to continue or as a teacher you can confirm that you know what you are doing is best for the child (which often it is).



I'm beginning to think like this too. The book she's come home with tonight is very simple - both the words and the sentence structure. Even if I succeed in this matter (getting her out of reading 1 set of books) she's still not being challenged by the readers they are using in school.

The library is the way to go I think. She's nearly finished all the ones she had so I think there'll be an early Easter Hols visit.

Hopefully now nicely edited

I edited your post to make the quotes work and to make it clear that the last bit you quoted was from a different user. Hope that's OK.

You may be surprised when you go in for the chat and, even if you're not, at least you'll have given her a chance.
Good luck and let us know what the outcome is.

I will certainly let you know the outcome. thanks for editing my post. I'm not entirely sure what went wrong there and I was too busy multi-tasking to check it through properly. Also what's the best way to use quotes from different users within 1 reply. I'm not sure on the coding...

I could only edit the copy of it inside my own post - if you want to edit the original you'll need to go into edit and play with the quote tags.
They work like parentheses - you can nest them however you like, but each "open" (quote in square brackets) has to have a corresponding "close" (slash-quote in square brackets) somewhere. If they don't balance correctly, the computer can't work out how to pair up any of them, so it ignores them and displays them as text.

To quote multiple posts, you click on the "+quote" button at the bottom of each post, then when you've tagged as many as you want, click on the "add reply" button at the bottom of the page (not one of the "reply" ones at the bottom of an individual post).

Use the QUOTE button to highlight each of the posts you wish to reply to.
Then use ADDREPLY, which will have each of the posts you wanted.
Finally, insert your comments on each post.

Simple!

thankyou. I'll try to remember that next time

Hello

I wonder if school does a test to measure a child’s reading age, this was done in Year 1 and Year 2, our daughter is also six, and has given the teachers a clear understanding of the reading age of our daughter. Thus have been able to get the sort of books that challenge our daughter and let us know what sort of age group we should be thinking about when visiting the local Library.

We view education as a tripartite process, School, Child and Parents, we are there to support one another and work with each other to get the best for our child. I've even taken a book back to school and highlighted a problem with the content (a super book on electricity, but had a page on the electric chair, I consider discussing Capital Punishment with a six year old, because that is what I had to do, as inappropriate), school were delighted that I had brought it to their attention.

I would have hoped for a similar response also. My sister had a similar experience in which a book on minibeasts was inaccurate (something to do with having a picture with a bee with a sting on it's nose and not in it's tail.) gain the teachers followed this up.

Hoping to have a quick word tonight or at least to arrange an opportunity for a longer chat tomorrow.

A point to consider is that for a young child who is an able reader appropriate books can be a tricky thing.
Sometimes books which they are able to read contain vocabulary or concepts that they are not yet able to understand or that is inappropriate for their age. This can mean that they are not necessarily reading with a good level of understanding.

Yes I do know what you mean but that's not an issue yet for my daughter. She's able as in reading at a Y3 ish level in Y1 but not shakespeare ( or even Watership down) yet

Didn't get to speak to the teacher tonight - she was busy with another parent and we had to rush off to dancing.

The thing is some of the other books in the same set aren't so bad, still no speech marks but at least the sentence structure's sound. I still feel I need to "clear the air" with the teacher. Explain my concerns in person and then move on. The reading material is still not going to challenge her but there's plenty in the library.

Watership Down is awesome, and is so well written: wonderfully poetic! I admit I didn't understand all the words, but I still remember the sense of peril when you come to the page where the construction board is introduced, or when Bigwig is caught in the snare; the thrill at the raid on Efrafa; and Kehaar's hilarious antics (though not sure my mother would have been too happy if she knew about the bad language Kehaar uses!)

Though my other favourite book as a six year old would probably be perfectly suitable for your daughter: Roald Dahl's Matilda. While Watership Down was something of a challenge to prove that I could read it, and was not tackled again until the end of primary school, Matilda was read to the point of the book practically disintegrating. I lost my copy once, and I was so distraught my dad bought me a new copy (following which the original turned up!). I also loved the "My Naughty Little Sister" books, and "The Sheep Pig". (We read this in class and made Babe sock puppets with a felt tongue, paper ears and a section of an egg carton for the nose).

As for books being appropriate, I completely understand that this has to be a consideration, but for me there were never really any books I was not allowed to read (though this may have been becasue my mum knew that the sorts of books I would be able to get my hands on at our house or at my Catholic primary school were not things she would need to be concerned about). The only things my mum banned me from reading were the problem pages in magazines, and I obeyed that rule until I was a teenager and came to the conclusion that it couldn't possibly apply anymore.

I admit to being the sort of child who considered reading an encyclopaedia or dictionary a fun way to pass an afternoon, and was thrilled on my ninth birthday when I was given a beautifully bound thesaurus in a slip case, which I proudly took into school every day.

I think that the big difficulty is getting the right books for children who are able readers. We ended up buying large chunks of the Oxford Reading Tree as well as using the Library to supplement reading.

The one thing I wish we had done was insist that daughter did more maths. The maths teaching wasn't particularly brilliant in her Primary, this coupled with finding language work easy, caused problems later. Maths did improve in High school but I'm sure they would have been better with concentration earlier.

Being a teacher yourself you have probably already considered this.

Yes but it's difficult. My son seems to enjoy numbers (At only just 4). He seems to have concepts of simple addition/subtraction in place already. He's also a beginner reader.

My daughter finds reading fun but is likely to sob and "tizzy" about maths. Yesterday she said she saw 8 pairs of feet under a gate so there must be 2 dogs. I tried to explain the difference between 4 pairs i.e. 8 feet and 8 pairs being 16 feet. It was after school and she was tired but needed lots of prompting to even think about counting in 2s (which she's very capable of) to work out how many 8 pairs were. I encourage her but so far on her terms -If she's asking me a maths question I try to take it a step further for her but I don't push it. She's doing fine on this front in school but I think reading will always be her 1st love (A little like her mummy )

Whilst I did maths to A level and English to only GCSE I consider myself more a literacy kind of person than a mathematical one. (The choice to do Maths A level was because it was a better compliment to the sciences and many uni's asked for it. Given half a chance I'd have don English too.)

My hubby's the other way so together we're a good compliment.

I agree. I remember staying awake well after "lights out" to finish it. (it was summer though so it was more cutain ajar rather than lights on ) Then I cried at the end because Hazel died. I wasn't that old but was probably about 10 at the time. It was the first piece of fiction either written or drama to ellicit such an emotional response from me. I later called my guinea pig Hazel after the rabbit. (He was male too - like in the book)



They've been reading a lot of the Roald Dahl books as a class and she's loved them. Think I may have matilda on the shelf and fantastic Mr Fox. May need to steer her in this direction. Thanks for that.

I think a lot of the problems are caused by our early start education. Boys tend to develop number skills before language skills and girls vice versa. By the age of eight or so things have evened out for each s e x, but by then the damage has been done because for 3 years (a very long time at that stage of their lives) boys have found Maths easier than English and girls have found English easier than Maths. This leads to many boys disliking/feeling they are poor at reading and writing, and many girls disliking/feeling they are poor at maths.

Unfortunately, British schools are totally committed to starting reading and sums at age 5. Having had a daughter first, and seen how she became "ready to read" before starting school, I was well aware that my son had not reached that stage when he started school - though his maths skills at that point were well in advance of hers at that age. I discussed this with his reception teacher and said I'd much prefer it if he didn't start the reading scheme instantly; however, as you might expect I was totally ignored.

For years my daughter felt she was much worse at Maths than English, even though she got A* at GCSE for both. She had a fear of getting maths wrong and was unable to consider different methods of doing calculations.

For years my son refused to do any reading just for fun. Though he was actually very good at reading (on entry to junior school at age 7 his reading age was measured at 12), because he had really struggled with reading for the first 6 months at school (when he finally reached readiness to read), he disliked it. It's only from age 16 up that he's read any fiction just for pleasure.

Many European countries don't introduce formal learning until age 7, and let children learn through play and develop their own skills set until then. I do wonder whether we start our kids too early. Of course, some children will be ready for formal education at age 5, but I'm sure many are not and find some of it a struggle.

You are preaching to the converted here Berkshire Mum. I totally agree and have been saying the same for years. I also faught the efforts to change our local school admissions policy to 1 early admission intake so some kids would be only just 4 - a whole year before legally required to attend!!! on this basis.

My son is actually enjoying reading early too and is further on i think than my daughter at the same age. One big difference is though that my daughter has recently been given glasses (I had to wait a year for a final check after first raising concerns Aaaag! But that's another story) and I think that affected her. I also think it explains the big gap between her reading and writing. Reading was ok because she could hold it out at arm's length but writing was in her poor focus distance.

Update: Spoke to teacher tonight. Approached it in a nice fashion and whilst I expressed the reasons for my concerns we also discussed some of the comments raised earlier on this thread about not all books following the conventions etc and so she needed to be aware of this. I said that i was concerned that when pushing her to improve sentence structure we'd get a "but the book did it!" type of response. BUT we both agreed that the poor sentence structure in some books could actually be used to advantage as a teaching tool to show my daughter why it was important to put full stops etc in the right place.

I told the teacher that I was trying to support her as I appreciated what she'd done already for my daughter and that I wasn't trying to criticise her as a teacher but explained that my daughter had been getting increasingly frustrated with these books. She agreed that in these circumstances in the future we should just give up on the book and put a note in her book - to the effect of read to page .... and the gave up because..... So I think we've reached a compromise situation. She's still not being particularly challennged but I do know her teacher is aware of this and she can read more challenging material at home.

I'm not sure other countries are better. France only starts "formal" education the year the child turns 7 but they can start nursery school aged 2 1/2 and some are bored out of their minds by the time they start formal schooling. In her last year of nursery school my younger daughter was starting to read, could count past a thousand in both languages and was interested in multiplying. Her teacher totally ignored any interest she had for anything not on the syllabus with the result that my daughter once told her teacher she didn't know what came after "five" and when I asked her why she'd said she didn't know, she said it was because they hadn't yet learnt it in class and her teacher didn't like them knowing things she hadn't taught them herself . The teacher only discovered she was bright when she had her tested by the child psychologist because she was under the impression my daughter was backward

And once formal education starts it is just as rigid. My elder daughter has just been officially diagonised with dyslexia five years after I first expressed my concerns that she might be. When she was learning to read, I could see she was struggling and went to see the teacher several times. I was told I was worrying unnecessarily because children only learn to read at Easter. The week before the Easter holidays the teacher demanded a meeting with me because my daughter hadn't learnt to read.

Just a note we LOVE Michel Rosen.

I'd have said:

1. Teacher - throw out the older books (or at least remove them from the classroom) and update your bookshelf

2. Borrow some books from a KS2 room

3. Pair her up, either with a weaker reader, so that she can discuss texts read in detail with the other child, or with an older child for paired reading, if possible...

Thankyou for your comment. Believe me, in some ways I would have liked to have said this but in others I could also see that reading a wide range of texts was useful. Her teacher acknowledged that my daughter is not far off reading the books that she is currently reading to the class and that they don't always follow standard conventions. However, she didn't address the fact that the books she is providing are not challenging my daughter. For now I'm taking this on at home BUT there will come a point where if school doesn't catch up I WILL be approaching them again.