Guide to Coloured Book Bands

What are colour bands?

Colour banding gives you a guide to which books are suitable for your child's age.

Bands are selected based on the complexity of the book. Factors considered include the vocabulary, sentence structure and of course the content. Colour bands are applied to both fiction and non fiction.

The colours start with Lilac (no words) which is the very first stage of learning to read, all the way through to Dark Red. This handy chart will help you work out the band your child should be at based on the National Curriculum.

Like all schemes for reading this is just a guide for the 'average' child in mainstream school. As we all know children develop at different stages so you may find you may need to move up or down the list accordingly.