All you need to know about Book Bands

Once a child has mastered the basics of phonics, a whole world of reading starts to open up to them. They benefit hugely from books which gradually introduce new words and sentence structures, helping them to progress steadily and surely. Reading books are graded by difficulty in reading levels known as Book Bands and each Book Band has its own colour. There are eleven book bands, and the chart below shows which book bands are appropriate for children of different ages, and also how they match Oxford Reading Tree, a reading scheme used in many Primary schools:

guide-to-book-bands

The chart shows the progress of an ‘average’ band of children – but no individual child is ‘average’, so no child makes smooth progress precisely in this way. Children tend to learn in fits and starts – periods of growth followed by periods of consolidation when their progress seems to halt for a while. The periods where you don’t see rapid progress may be worrying, especially after a ‘growth spurt’, but they are important as your child develops confidence in using and applying their newly acquired skills. It’s just part of the learning process.

If you are ever worried about your child’s reading progress, talk to their teacher, but as a rough guide, children should be able to read at least 90% of the words on the page without any problem. If the book is too easy, they can become bored. If it’s too difficult, they can become frustrated, and may have to concentrate so hard on reading the words that they lose the enjoyment of understanding the story.

Herok hopes this information is useful to some of our readers. Look out for further releases in Herok Educational Furniture‘s education series.