We keep an estimate of how hard the words in your child's books are, and, if you allow it, of the level of text that suits them. It is an estimate of the text, on a scale of our own. It is not a measure of your child, it is not a school reading level, and it will not match a number from a teacher or a test.
Your child never sits a test they can pass or fail for it, and is never shown a level, a speed or a score.
Where you see it
On your child's Progress page (Readers, then your child, then "Progress"):
- Reading level shows a number on our own scale once at least three books have been made for them, worked out from the words in those books. If learning is on, it shows our estimate instead and says whether it has moved over the last few books. The same caution about what the number means is always printed with it.
- What level suits them appears only when "Learn what they enjoy" is on. It shows the same estimate with your child's age group and a sentence about how it has moved, and it may offer to move them to another age group.
How the estimate is made
The estimate only builds up while "Learn what they enjoy" is switched on, on your child's Safety page. It is off unless you turn it on, and turning it off deletes the estimate along with everything else that was learned.
While it is on, we learn from what your child does as they read:
- the words they tap for help
- the pages they read aloud to Pip
- how the questions at the end of a book went
- whether they finish a book or put it down partway
Each moves the estimate a little, and less as more is known, so one tired evening counts for little. The estimate never changes your child's age group by itself. Moving a reader to another age group explains how a suggestion becomes a move, and how the just-right check works, which does not need learning to be on.
Words on the page
Most books are written a second time in simpler words, telling the same story with the same pictures. Picture books are also written a third time in richer words. Your child's Settings page, in the "Reading" card, has "Words on the page":
| Choice | What your child sees |
|---|---|
| Let TaleTykes choose | The words as written, unless learning is on and the book was written for a different age group from your child's |
| Simpler words | The simpler version, where one was written |
| As written | The words as the book was first written |
| Richer words | The richer version, where one was written |
If no version was written at the level you chose, the page shows the words as written. Changing this applies to books already on the shelf as well as new ones, because the versions are written when the book is made.
Phonics
Books for Ages 5 to 7 are written so that your child can sound out almost every word with the letter sounds they have been taught. The exceptions are a few words learned by sight and the characters' names. This applies to stories written in English. Phonics phases are an English scheme, so a Spanish story is not written to a phase, even though the setting still appears for a reader whose stories are in Spanish.
There are eleven phases. The first nine are the scheme schools use, and they run to roughly the end of Year 2. The last two are for older readers who can decode but still find long words hard, and they carry the spellings that make long words possible.
| Phase | Name | Some of the sounds it adds |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | First sounds | s, a, t, p, i, n |
| 2 | More single letters | m, d, g, o, c, k |
| 3 | Short vowels complete | ck, e, u, r |
| 4 | Double letters | h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss |
| 5 | Remaining consonants | j, v, w, x |
| 6 | Y, z and qu | y, z, zz, qu |
| 7 | Consonant digraphs | ch, sh, th, ng, nk |
| 8 | Vowel digraphs | ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar and more |
| 9 | Alternative spellings | ay, ou, ie, ea and more |
| 10 | Long vowel spellings | augh, ough, eigh, ui, oar, oor |
| 11 | Endings of longer words | tion, sion, ture, sure, cian |
A new reader in Ages 5 to 7 with English stories starts at phase 4. Ages 7 to 9 starts at phase 9 and Ages 9 to 12 at phase 10, because a nine-year-old is not on "s a t p i n". If you are not sure which phase your child is on, ask their teacher.
Phases 1 to 9 are the ones that bound every word of a book. For the two above them the phase does something different: the book is written for your child's age as usual, and some of its words are chosen to carry the spelling they are working on. A ten-year-old's book is not built out of a short list of words.
If your child is older and still finding words hard
A child can be reading their own age's stories and still be working on letter sounds that came years earlier. For them the books do not get younger. The plot, the characters, the humour, the length and how much can go wrong all stay exactly where their age group puts them, and only the words move: most of them stay inside the sounds your child has actually been taught, and the few the story genuinely needs are left in, to be read together.
That is deliberately not the same as a book for a five-year-old. A book built out of a hundred words is not an easier story for a ten-year-old, it is a worse one about nothing, and they can tell in a page.
There is a point below which we do not do this at all. If your child is still some way from reading longer words, a page of their own age's writing cannot be held to their sounds without either being unreadable or being cut down until nothing happens in it. We measured where that point is, and below it we give them ordinary books for their age and put the help into the word games and into tapping a word instead. That is a smaller promise than we would like to make and it is the true one.
A book built round a sound
As well as staying inside the sounds your child has met, a book is asked to be full of the particular one they are working on, using words they can already sound out. It is checked afterwards for two things: whether the sound turned up often enough in enough different words to be practice, and whether the story survived it. A book that is nothing but its own sound is not a book, and it is refused for that as readily as for being too hard.
Which sound is chosen comes from what your child's own reading has shown, and the word games explain that in more detail.
To change it:
- Go to Readers, choose your child and open "Settings".
- In the "Reading" card, choose a phase under "Which phonics phase are they on?".
- Press "Save".
Books made from then on use the sounds up to that phase. The phase only changes when you change it.
If a book seems far too hard or too easy for your child, you can tell us from Help in your dashboard under "The reading level, or how a book turned out".