Early reading cards.
May 19, 2011 3:12 PM   Subscribe

Hi; Does anyone remember those reading place cards form school? They had a short story on one side,then questions about the story on the other.They all had a colour on the the right corner I think.

You started with green.These cards were in schools in the 1970s's.

I need to know what they are called-I belive it was a CRS card.

I would very much like to buy a few.

Thank you.
posted by WOLF101 to Education (26 answers total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
SRA?
posted by klarck at 3:18 PM on May 19, 2011 [4 favorites]


Best answer: They were called SRA cards, i believe.
posted by the cuban at 3:18 PM on May 19, 2011


Yep. SRA is what I had and it matches your description. I think I recall them from the 5th grade.
posted by Quizicalcoatl at 3:26 PM on May 19, 2011


Best answer: SRA cards indeed. Sometimes eBay has the old ones, though I don't see any right now. If you image search for "sra reading" you'll see some pictures of the '70s and '80s ones like this. I lived for these things.
posted by dayintoday at 3:33 PM on May 19, 2011


Response by poster: Yes,SRA-thank you!
Its been driving me nuts,lol.
Anyhow,I went to ebay,and ur right,there are not alot there.
I will keep looking.
Thanks you everyone :-).
posted by WOLF101 at 3:58 PM on May 19, 2011


I remember these from elementary school also. The pictures linked above don't quite match my memory but SRA is what I remember calling them.
posted by dchrssyr at 3:59 PM on May 19, 2011


Loved 'em! Loved that I could read at my own pace (quick-quick!), and didn't these cards use grease pencils? I loved pulling the string to uncover more pencil. (Odd child.)
posted by thebrokedown at 4:44 PM on May 19, 2011 [2 favorites]


It's possible that SRA stands for Scholastic Reading <>>. I loved those, because they had questions based on the reading and then check your answers immediately. We had several self-guided instructional systems in the crazy adventurous early 1970's.
posted by ohshenandoah at 5:01 PM on May 19, 2011


I absolutely loved them. You could keep going to higher levels. I still remember a story about how they stopped the water in Niagara Falls (and I'm almost 60 and can't remember what I did yesterday! ;-)
posted by la petite marie at 6:39 PM on May 19, 2011 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Wasn't olive, oddly, the highest difficulty level? Even above silver, IIRC?

I loved those cards. Thanks for the question, which took me right back 30 years.
posted by torticat at 7:13 PM on May 19, 2011 [1 favorite]


Is it these? A set from 1967 - I had forgotten all about these. Thanks for reminding me!
posted by nightwood at 7:24 PM on May 19, 2011


Oh my gosh, I haven't thought about those in ages! We used to use them on Friday 'activity' days, IIRC; my friends and I always saw them as a real treat. The one story I can remember involved a large magic bubble that some kid and his stuffed animal somehow ended up inside, and it enabled the stuffed animal to come to life ... I had no idea that that was still lodged up in my brain somewhere. Thanks for asking this question!
posted by DingoMutt at 7:29 PM on May 19, 2011


My daughter's fourth grade class is currently using them. If you wouldn't mind getting a modern set you could try a teachers' supply store.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:20 PM on May 19, 2011


It's possible that SRA stands for Scholastic Reading

Nope -- Science Research Associates^, later part of IBM, now part of McGraw-Hill. The founder^ was a colleague of my grandfather at the University of Chicago. I learned to read from these well ahead of my peers, thanks to my mom's pre-K coaching.
posted by dhartung at 9:06 PM on May 19, 2011


I am so excited that you asked this question. It's bugged me for a week now, and I kept forgetting to google the answer. I loved them!!
posted by szechuan at 9:30 PM on May 19, 2011


Also, you can buy them online in this country but they are NOT cheap: http://www.shop.bookends.co.nz/catalog/112972/18342
posted by szechuan at 9:32 PM on May 19, 2011


those go back to the 60s - i remember them from 3rd or 4th grade - i whizzed through the whole set in a week and totally impressed the teacher
posted by pyramid termite at 9:38 PM on May 19, 2011


When I read the question I thought it might've been the color-coded reading deal I remember from 5th grade, '88-89, but that first pic doesn't quite seem to match. The one single detail I associate with it was that one of colors was either "aqua" or "aquamarine," which seemed weird to me at the time ("Why not light blue"?).

And it felt like the sort of thing the teacher could just pull out when he wanted to chill out for a while.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 12:51 AM on May 20, 2011


I also remember something similar to these in the UK in the mid-90s. I definitely remember using them around age 8 or 9. But the cards we used were old and probably came from the 70s or 80s! The levels had such strange colours, and the progression through the colours made no sense (as someone said above, gold was not the highest level).

I actually hated doing these because they were so easy. I would be able to get through a few levels every time we did them, and I am fairly sure I ran out of cards to do by the time we stopped using them.

As for where you could get them, maybe check local schools and see if they have older copies no longer in use that you could get?
posted by maybeandroid at 1:05 AM on May 20, 2011


I loved the cards, but since my school system was too cheap to spring for grease pencils we had to write out the questions on paper and then answer them. In my case that took more time and effort than reading the cards, so I just went on to the next card and never got credit for them.
posted by TedW at 4:24 AM on May 20, 2011


I was the SRA king in grade school. Read my little ass off to get to the last card before anyone else. I loved SRA. Got me into reading better than anything else.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:48 AM on May 20, 2011 [1 favorite]


Loved SRA, thanks for bringing up a fond memory from school!
posted by jennstra at 9:42 AM on May 20, 2011


I absolutely hated them because we weren't allowed to just select the right answer to the fill in the blank question sentences on the back. We were required to write out the entire sentences filling in the missing word. I refused to do that, so I just read all the cards, determined that I knew all the answers, didn't do the work and got in trouble for not keeping up. C'est la vie.
posted by meinvt at 6:54 PM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]


I think my mom (a former teacher) had a set of those for me at home. I LOVED them. I was not your typical kid.
posted by kathrynm at 5:07 AM on May 22, 2011



I loved those cards. Thanks for the question, which took me right back 30 years.


Amazing how many of us remembered these. Take me right back to 1st grade
posted by TravellingCari at 8:02 PM on May 23, 2011


Response by poster: Thanks everyone!
posted by WOLF101 at 9:50 PM on May 31, 2011


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