Anonymous wrote:Google SRA reading kits with cards and you will get lots of information.

They are still sold by McGraw Hill and prohibitively expensive for home use.

https://www.mheducation.com/prek-12/product/sra-reading-laboratory-1a-kit-updated-2020-mcgraw-hill/9780077024666.html?srsltid=AfmBOoqAq9ApAkYDN5790TPdx1mk2FzQxQEAmEJ_fzav_QIBVccPyGhs

I had something like this at my school in the 1970s and hated it. I like to read real books.

If you want a series to help your kid read better, tell us what grade level your kid is in.

100 easy lessons is basically a condensed, abridged version of SRA by the same author.

You can also sometimes find units of SRA on ebay

I loved these! Thanks for unlocking that memory. But I think even in the 80s I realized they were something for the quicker students to do to fill time until the whole class was ready. I liked the challenge of completing the whole box.

Yes - they are still around but not very much in use!

I keep two of the "boxes" in my closet. They are very useful for days when the internet goes down!

My teacher always checked everyone's answers. They gave a placement test at the beginning of the year, so each child was at an appropriate level.

I was a strong reader and I was relieved they had individualized reading assignments, rather than boring me with readings well below what I read at home.

I think 5th grade was the last year of SRA. After that, we moved to collectively reading hardback books:

Call of the Wild
How Green Was My Valley
The Hobbit
And other classics

Anonymous wrote:Sorry you hated it. I kind of liked that each student could proceed at their own pace.

NP
+1

I, too, remember them fondly from back in the day (70s). I think we timed ourselves and had to reach certain goals before we could advance to a higher level. I remember liking the challenge. While the stories weren’t literary classics, they were reasonably entertaining and varied. Incidentally, like one of the PPs above, I was also a strong reader.

My reading instruction in the 70s was fantastic. Beginning readers had a phonics workbook and decodable readers similar to today’s BOB books. After our introductory year of phonics, we had a basal reader, a reading workbook, the SRA kits, and occasionally novels (I think Charlotte’s web was 2nd or 3rd grade). There was also a device that projected text a line at a time on the wall which was intended to increase our reading pace, the novelty was fun, but I don’t know if it was actually effective. We also had spelling books and grammar books.

I was shocked when my kids (now grown) started school in the 2000s in “one of the best school systems in the country” and discovered that not only were textbooks absent, but they promoted memorization and guessing over phonics. Thankfully, they seem to have finally changed in recent years, adopting proven reading curricula that embraces phonics.

Anonymous wrote:Sorry you hated it. I kind of liked that each student could proceed at their own pace.

PP. If you are a teacher...as a child I preferred either direct instruction or student's choice of what to do.

I did not like card kits because they felt like busywork and the teacher never checked the work. I was a strong reader so answering obvious questions wasn't fun. If the teacher asked me, that might be different because that's a human interaction.

If you are looking for a methodology, there are newer curriculums that combine reading books with question sets. Maybe not for lower elementary although maybe for 3rd grade plus.

If you are looking for self-managed work, I think that's what people are using iPads for now. If you are using this to get kids off screens...then maybe this is an option.

Sorry you hated it. I kind of liked that each student could proceed at their own pace.

Google SRA reading kits with cards and you will get lots of information.

They are still sold by McGraw Hill and prohibitively expensive for home use.

https://www.mheducation.com/prek-12/product/sra-reading-laboratory-1a-kit-updated-2020-mcgraw-hill/9780077024666.html?srsltid=AfmBOoqAq9ApAkYDN5790TPdx1mk2FzQxQEAmEJ_fzav_QIBVccPyGhs

I had something like this at my school in the 1970s and hated it. I like to read real books.

If you want a series to help your kid read better, tell us what grade level your kid is in.

Back in the day, my school used this “SRA Reading Kits” to help build reading fluency and ensure comprehension. There were many levels, each a different color. For each level there are several cards, each having a very short reading maybe 1 page, then a set of questions about the reading.

Are these still around? Are they used locally?