Has anyone any experiences with this. Also interested in French, since I am both a German and French speaker.
Our children are reading in English and we want to start them reading in German, but are struggling to find books which increase with difficulty. There doesn`t seam to be anything similar to the UK`s Oxford reading tree system.
I don't know the Oxford Reading Tree. The big Orell Füssli shop at Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich has its shelves categorised with many age recommendations though (6+, 8+, 10+, 12+ as far as I remember). But maybe your local book shop can help you?
The ORT is now available in German. Check out their website for further details.
Is it not the Heidelberg Lesen Baum then?
ok, I've got my coat...
TAXIIII! for Owl and Pussycat
(c;
Can't help you with the German, but I'm using this site to improve my son's French reading:
It has printable graded reading books from kindergarten up to the end of elementary school, both fiction and non-fiction, poetry, comics, all sorts. There are literally thousands of English language books, around 400 of which have also been translated into French (and Spanish). The early books are of the 'I see a dog. I see a pig. The dog is in the kennel. The pig is in the mud.' sort of level - lots of repetition, one sentence per page always at the bottom below a very obvious picture.
Then they move up through 2, 3, 4, etc sentences per page, still with simple clauses and lots of pictures, then upwards until the higher levels, where there's the full range of language structures, specialist theme-based vocab about sharks or whatever, and so on. I read French at a comfortable B1 level, which is about where the high readers are.
There are also a series of 'high frequency word' books which use repetition to introduce the key pronouns, verbs and prepositions - these are EXCELLENT for bumping up kids' survival playground vocab really quickly.
You pay around 40 chfs to subscribe for a year, then print and staple up any books you want. It's a complete steal, as you always get such a churn on graded readers which are mostly too dull for kids to want to read more than once or twice before discarding.
Or colouring, if you're my daughter; I'm also using it with my 5 yr old, to get her reading in English before she is taught to read French in just over a year. My son learnt in the UK via Oxford Reading Tree - this system is perhaps not as 'funky' as Kipper and the gang, but the stories are jolly enough and the non-fiction subjects interesting and wide-ranging with stuff to appeal to both genders.
kodokan
Have ordered some books tonight, will let you know how we get on.