A friend of mine, at least 10 years my junior, had no idea what a “reader” was when we were talking one day about elementary school. I was wondering what others may have called their text used in “Reading” class. For us, I can only recall it being called a “reader”. Are there other names used over the years?
For clarity, this text contained short stories. IIRC, each story typically was followed by a story review (i.e.: comprehension questions) and vocabulary words. …Wasn’t this a “reader” to you? - Jinx
Yep, that what we called them. Sometimes they may have been referred to by the name (Crossroads or Journeys Into Reading or some such drivel), but I know they were called our readers as well. In the higher grades, (5-6) this helped to differentiate them from our English books, which was a grammar book.
I was in elementary school in the late 1960’s and early "70’s.
Yep, “take your readers out and turn to page 247”.
In upper elementary our school system made use of a series where every reader had a single-word pretentious name like Ventures and Cavalcades, different title for each intended year. First grade reader was something called Jack and Janet (although admittedly that might not have been the book title but just the main characters). There were some years in between when I was permitted to read whatever I wanted to out in the hall and skip reading class, so I don’t know what they had.
No. In honesty, I’d never heard the term “reader” until I started collecting books for my library and found several fifth grade readers from the 30’s.
I don’t recall ever using anything like in in grade school. We read ordinary stand-alone books. We also had booklets of short stories and poems, each maybe ten pages long, with questions in the back and color-coded covers. The idea was that after you finished one color, you’d move up to the next, more difficult color. Being colors rather than numbers or letters meant that others wouldn’t know what level you were at–at least, that was the hope. In reality, it didn’t take much to figure out the order.
I also don’t recall the term ‘reader’ from elementary school at all. If someone came up and asked me, I would have no clue. Oh, and I originally went to school in Jersey. I’m not sure if it is a location thing or what.
When I was in elementary school, we didn’t call a text book a “reader” because we already something by that name - My Weekly Reader. A weekly (duh) 4 to 6 page tabloid concerning contemporary events; different editions for different grades, IIRC. There’s a cover from a 1963 edition here.
I went to school in British Columbia. We definitely had readers. Tell Me How the Sun Rose. Helicopters and Gingerbread. A Duck is a Duck. The Dog Next Door. A quick search of the web shows the ones I remember to be ‘Ginn Readers’ and you can even find some of them on eBay. I imagine there were other basic reader series out there, as well.
Oh great Gods, that brought back memories! I googled “Ginn Readers” and came across a collector’s page of different publishers’ reading series. My school was definately a Dick and Jane school (Scott Foresman & Co. publisher), I remember the illustrations and the names of the books. I also remember using Ventures, Vistas and the Wide Horizonsseries. I believe that the advanced reading group used the text for the next grade level, the regular students, the one for that grade level, and the “slow” learners (as they were called in my non-PC school days) the books for one grade level down. I know that kids moved into the advanced or regular group throughout the year as the teacher felt they had mastered whatever they were supposed to on the lower level.
I also remember being very excited about Wide Horizons–the stories were noticiably better written. I think this was during one of the periods of “literature based” reading programs so these books may have been collections of stories written for other publication, as opposed to the committee-written stories in other books. I still remember a discussion from 6th grade arising out of a story about a self-made man (could have been a biography)–we discussed whether a person without a formal education could make it big/rich in America today (this in 1972). I’ve remembered that for over 30 years–something went very right with that lesson plan!
Hmm… We definitely called them “reading books,” at least, and quite possibly “readers.” I don’t know for sure, but I suspect at least some of the teachers did refer to them as such. I went to elementary school in the early 80s in Chicago, for you points of reference.
We had readers. This was Tennessee, and I remember using the readers until at least 6th grade (I changed schools at that point, and I don’t specifically remember the new school using them, but I could be wrong).
I was in Catholic school and started kindergarten in 1978, so this was through about 1985 at least.
We called them reading books (NY state public school, 1970s). My mom would often call them readers, as in “Do you like your reader?” and I was annoyed at how dumb she was. Mom, they’re reading books, geez.
I don’t remember what this particular brand was called, but they definitely had a multicultural flair to them. I remember one story about a girl named Maria who goes to visit her grandmother and learns to make torillas, one about a little girl who lives in Chinatown and decides she wants an “American” name, and one (my favorite one) about a little boy who lives in the city (from the illustrations, the “city” is clearly a euphemism for “the projects”) who wants a pet, and eventually gets a turtle. Ahhh, the 1970s.
As I recall, someone around here had a link to a place where you can buy copies of the old Dick, Jane & Sally books. I’d like to get my hands on one for 1966 for my little sister. She would have been in first grade that year. Her birthday is coming up. Anyone know?
“Reading Books” like “Math Books” or “Spelling Books” or “Social Studies Books” they were math book size and shape and hardcover.
I’ve heard of readers, of course, I read a lot when I was little, and that’s what they always had in old books (“Little House,” “Anne,” Louisa May Alcott, &tc. the big classic girls’ books), but I until this thread, I’d thought that they’d gone away with the one-room schoolhouse.
I was in elementary school in the early 90s. I don’t recall ever using the term “reader”. We just called 'em books: Math books, spelling books, reading books, excercise books.
They were never called “readers” when I was in elementary school in the mid-late 70s. They were simply called our “reading books”, much of whose contents I found to be boring, so I never did too well in this subject. If they were called “readers” this would have confused me as my logical-thinking young mind would make me call them “readees”, as in the object being read. The person reading it would be the “reader.”
Primary level, we called them by the book’s titles. The reading books were a series, each with a picture of a different animal made out of crumpled newspaper. Titles were such awful alliterations as First Feathers, Calico Capers, Pound Puppies - one exception had a picture of an owl, and was called Hootenany. I swear, we spent weeks going over this horrid story in first grade called Funny Faces.
Actually hated all of my textbooks in grades 1 - 3. Spectrum of English was the horrid grammar text, and then were the miserable spelling books…
