Oxford Reading Tree Range and Progression

BEGINNER READERS
Stages 1-3 concentrate on enriching language and developing the early literacy skills that children need to achieve reading readiness and go on to become competent readers.
The resources introduce children to a range of text types: stories, information books, poetry and rhymes, as well as extensive support. These have been designed to:

• encourage children to talk and make links to their own experiences
• develop listening skills
• enable children to make the link between text and pictures
• develop an understanding of text and how it behaves
• support the prediction of meaning
• introduce the main Reading Tree characters with whom children can identify
• foster early phonological awareness and introduce rhyme and initial phonemes
• introduce the first high frequency key words
• teach early book-handling skills
• initiate early writing skills

BECOMING FLUENT
Stages 4-5 consolidate the early language skills and develop reading confidence, stamina and an increased range of strategies for reading. The range of text types is expanded with stories which move from real life into fantasy worlds, information books which cover a wider number of topics and treatments, and poems and rhymes which are slightly more complex. These, and the numerous teaching resources have been designed to:

• increase children’s confidence with longer texts and narratives moving from one story to the next.
• offer more complex plots within the books
• provide opportunities for children to be reflective about their reading
• give practice in the use of different strategies for checking that reading makes sense
• develop reading stamina
• offer a wider choice for independent reading
• support the use of phonological strategies in making analogies from one word to another with a shared rhyming spelling pattern
• help children to become young researchers
  
   

TOWARDS INDEPENDENCE

Stages 6-9 encourage further reading practice, increased reading stamina and stimulate the imagination with motivational narrative and rhyming stories, rich poetic language and magic adventures that foster reading for pleasure. The information books also extend into a wider sphere and expose children to an increased number of text types. The books at this level, with their teaching support, have been designed to:

• develop children’s insights into feelings and motivation of characters
• expand children’s vocabulary through fiction and non-fiction
• enhance opportunities for creative writing
• be read with enjoyment, expression, fluency, accuracy and understanding
• support an increased numbers of strategies in reading
• help children to read between the lines and make predictions and inferences which are not directly stated.
• help children cope with more complex language structures, language patterns, and ideas
• to make the differences between fiction and non-fiction totally explicit
• to turn children into fully confident and independent young readers.
   

TREETOPS
Stages 10-16

TreeTops have been designed to:

• provide support for children who still need carefully monitored language levels
• introduce children gradually to more complex narrative forms end extended reading vocabulary as they progress up the stages
• build children's reading stamina by gradually increasing the length of each story
• emphasize authorship through author biographies at the back of each book
• extend children's reading experience with a team of top class children's authors and talented illustrators