Out of interest, following the Harry Potter fest, I revisited the reading tests that I did in December with the offspring. Small now gets about half the words in each box up to 88, never missing more than a couple in a row, although he declined to go any further (grade 8 month 8 – 13 years old?). Big made her way into the next, so up to 92 (grade 9 month 2, perhaps 14?), though she mispronounced many of the words in exactly the same way he did.
Fascinating. Who knew that reading what you want to when you want to could be so good for your reading level 
but Jax, if they don’t read books that are exactly right for their key stage they can’t possibly progress properly can they (ducks and runs)
Hi Jax,
nice to hear from you. Thanks for the comment and I would love to come out of hibernation.
I’m fascinated by what you’ve just written in this post. I’m hoping it will happen that way for Lani one day. She loves books but is ever dependent on us reading what she wants read because what she wants to read is well above her reading level and she really doesn’t want to read that which is at her level. I’m thinking her reading is coming gradually as if by osmosis and she’ll arrive at the point at which she can read HP etc one day, and then we’ll not see her for dust!
just tested the kids using the Burt test, Big gets 97, 12.11 and Small 95 (though he stopped at that point, rather than not actually being able to read further) giving him 12.09.