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    Joined: Jun 2012
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    So DD5 is reading chapter books at home and dead keen to move on to "fat books". Harry Potter etc

    At school they are stalling her on 1 year in advance. She is due to skip next year so the stalling will see her start the year at the same level as the cohort she is moving into.

    She can read these books fluently with no errors and with intonation on the first read. She does appear to comprehend the reading HOWEVER some of the subject matter is out of her sphere of experience. For example she read a book about daring someone to be naughty. Well she doesn't know about being dared so of course asked the teacher to explain it to her.

    The teacher has acknowledged DD comprehends just fine but feels that it is useful to keep using these books to expose her to new ideas which she doesn't comprehend yet. We only have 5ish weeks left, should I push for a higher level or let it be. She is reading whatever she likes at home but I know she would like to do other things at home as well as reading but she feels the need to "catch up" outside of school time.

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    Sounds like a vocab issue rather than comprehension issue. We have that in our house, and it's especially clear to see when our newly 5yo (bilingual) reads in his weaker language, where he has of course a less rich vocabulary.

    My instinct is to say let it be, since you will want her vocabulary higher if she's going to be reading even harder books in her head. Plus, it's almost the end of the year.

    However, if your school is like mine, and they automatically place the children in a lower level at the beginning of the year (probably because it's a very results-driven school so the teachers need to show progress), I'd push for a higher level, since you'll also get additional development over the break. If you think the school will be sensible about levels when she starts next year, it's less of an issue.

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    With 5 weeks to go I'd save the arguing for next year as part of a conversation with the new teacher about how the skip is going

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    Ds6 has been stalled at the same level since the beginning of follterm 3 (NZ has 4 10 week terms). He is about 18 months ahead. They will not let him go further now because they insist that having missed the cut off by 5 weeks that he does 7 terms in year 1 followed by year 2 and he is 2 levels of the maximum he is allowed by the end of next year.

    In your case since they are allowing a skip i would leave it for now. Let her read lots at home and next year she will surge ahead in the higher class. The last 5 weeks of the year seem to be less academics anyway and everyone will pat your head and ignore you because they are too busy.

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    Thanks all my feelings are the same but I thought I'd check in just in case there was a different viewpoint.

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    I know what you mean, though, you'd rather start off running next year smile It can take weeks or months to settle in.
    DD just sat her second PATs and got stanine 9 both times. We need to keep going for the PATs two years ahead (or really even 3) but we are basically out of time. Her teacher is going to make a recommendation for DD to get straight into above-level testing in the new year.
    However by the time that happens it'll be March probably, and DD will have read about a hundred more books, lol. Popular wisdom seems to be that reading levels drop in the holidays, but DD's rise, after she's read a bunch of decent books and had a break from the lame school readers.
    But in these last few weeks, no one's interested! It's all athletics days and school pool, watching movies and practicing carols … smile

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    My kid's levels always go up over the holidays. I can see if you were in some states in the US and had three months off and did no reading (harvesting maybe?). But NZ has 6 weeks and they always get books for Christmas.

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    I think Dd will be on novels before Christmas.... I really can't fault her teacher this year though so I will let it slide, I'm not hearing great stuff about next years teacher so I might have to put my big girl boots on and start advocating then.

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    Originally Posted by puffin
    My kid's levels always go up over the holidays. I can see if you were in some states in the US and had three months off and did no reading (harvesting maybe?). But NZ has 6 weeks and they always get books for Christmas.

    Lol on the harvesting comment. We are getting less Summer break in 2016by about 2.5 weeks because they are moving the start date earlier.

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    I would be leery of letting your 5yo read too many "fat" books unless you read them all yourself first. My DS7 is reading at a 7th grade level on testing, but we've stalled out on 4th-5th grade fiction books due to content.

    I haven't read Harry Potter myself, but my Mom did and loved it so I asked her and she said perhaps the first book would be okay for him, but it starts to get scarier and darker from there.

    I was super excited when he began reading fat chapter books to share all my childhood faves with him, like Heinlein and Lackey, but I quickly found that most of these books I looked back on as innocent fare were too intense for him. I thought some of my older faves like Secret Garden would work, but he got lost in the slightly archaic phrasing, vocabulary and vernacular.

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