Reading schemes

- remember those?
And yes, they are still around. I was reminded of them this week because a friend posted a message about her granddaughter being disappointed when she had to read a reading scheme book. Apparently she wanted to get on with whatever else she was reading at the time.
I started school at a time when "Primer One" and "Primer Two" were still in use but the "Schonell" reading scheme was just starting. (The Schonell scheme had the dreadfully smug and good Dick and Dora, Nip the dog and Fluff the cat.)
I had read all these before I started school. I was bored silly by them. Looking back I must have been the biggest nuisance in the class. 
I went on to the primary school years where we had the "Radiant Readers". Our "readers" were given to us at the beginning of the  year. I read mine the day it was given to me. I can still remember the halting reading of so many other children as we were expected to go around the room and each read a sentence in turn.
    "Slowly Cat, so everyone can follow it."
Ugh! I must have been a horrible child.
For the last two years of the primary school my family headed into the almost-outback. There was no school library. Will the Children's Country Lending Service people ever realise how much borrowing those books meant to me and my brother and the eldest son of the bank manager? Probably not. We devoured what we considered to be "real" books.
And there was the reading scheme again. The Senior Cat somehow persuaded the "school committee" to spend limited funds on something called the "SRA Laboratory". (SRA was/is Science Research Associates.) There were "levels" for this. There was a test beforehand and you were put into the appropriate level. Then you read cards with stories on them and answered the questions.
As the Senior Cat was teaching four different year levels and supervising a fifth all in the same room I have no doubt at all that this made his life easier.
The cards had colour bands for the level you were on. I remember the top level for that particular box being "gold". The Senior Cat put me (and the bank manager's son) into the level below that. 
    "I have to give you something to do," he told us.
My brother (two years younger) was on the next level down for much the same reason. 
We all zipped through the cards anyway. I read the entire box and then helped some of the slowest readers work their way painfully through their cards. (There were some very slow students in the school. Intermarriage in the area was common.) 
I wonder now what those children made of the stories on those cards. I remember the stories being American in flavour. All they had done in those early versions was replace American spelling with British spelling.  There were stories about Red Indians and the Mayflower and life on the prairies. The prairie stories were nothing like Little House on the Prairie of course.
The Senior Cat and my mother went on to write books for another reading scheme. I wrote many more outlines for them to use with the vocabulary which was considered appropriate. It all got lost with the demise of the excellent Reading Centre - a resource teachers should never have lost.  
Ms W had a reading scheme at her school but I never saw the books. She brought other books home from the school library. We went to the local library for more.  She reads - a lot.
T.... across the road started school this year. He is still learning to read of course. He brings home "reading scheme" books. Some of them are rather good.
    "But my mummy or daddy reads to me every night from a proper book."
T...knows what he considers to be a "proper" book and it isn't one from his reading scheme. Those are just for learning to read. There is an entirely different world of "proper" books out there - and he is impatient to read them. I am glad he knows about such things.