Reading

In Early Years and Key Stage 1, the school uses ‘Read Write Inc’ Reading Scheme. Within this scheme, there are fiction and non-fiction books which correlate to the National Book Bands (please see Phonics page). From Year 3 or when the children are ready for their next reading stage, the school uses a vast selection of reading books (from a range of reading schemes), which are carefully graded by reading levels known as book bands. As a rough guide, children are expected to reach the highest level (lime) at seven years old. Children who read above lime level are reading fairly fluently and although some books are still graded above this level, children are reading such a wide range of material that the banding becomes not so important. Below is a guide of what colour band you can expect your child to be reading in school and at home:

The books will vary in a number of ways, including layout, size, vocabulary and length, to give the children a rich diet of literature. The difference between each colour band/number stage is very gradual, so that children do not experience great difficulty moving up through the scheme.

Progress through the bands is not automatic and it is important to ensure that children working in the early bands have secure understanding so that they remain in control of the task and well-motivated as they move on to more challenging texts.

To help you understand how the book bands correlate with different schemes of books that we have in school (such as Big Cat and Oxford Reading Tree), please see the document below.