Mad moments in Education

DD was taught ITA and has never been brilliant at spelling. By the time her brother started school they had stopped it and gone back to normal English. He has always been much better at spelling than his sister. I remember someone saying "If you want to teach children to read English why would you start by teaching them Bulgarian?)

On the other hand GS1 is currently in a class where they do a lot of moving from table to table and is getting on very well with it. His ADHD is much less of a problem if he isn't stuck with something he hates and he doesn't get into as much trouble.

DGS had a reading age way ahead of his when he was 9 - so wandering around not working must have had some effect.

Although it may have been the change of schools when he was 7 that did the trick

Ooh er! My DD2 learnt to read by the ITA method when we lived on the IOW. We moved back to Hampshire when she was 7. At her new school she had a reading age of 10. It must have worked for some!

I remember the board rubbers that Mrs Morris used to throw at us. One time she picked up the ink pot and threw that instead (not at me)!

The open-plan progressive schools where pupils wandered around, not having to work if they didn't feel like it. DS didn't feel like it very often.
The same school thought children learnt times tables by osmosis and put a few random examples on the walls.

The fact that my BF retired early because they thought that nearly 80 nursery age children was fine for her to deal with (half in the morning, the other half pm).

My friend's DD's school taught by the ITA method, luckily my DD went to a different school which didn't use it. And she was a primary school teacher so taught her DD at home herself.

I can also remember - those wooden board rubbers some teachers used to throw at you
I worked at a school where they had ashtrays in the classroom for the teachers
I also worked at a school where a lot of the teachers used to go to the pub at lunchtimes
Not all changes are bad!

I've just had to Google ITA reading. I could not read the text shown.
Thank goodness I didn't have to learn this way.

Elrel 1960s "the words at the back"
I was a 'peripatetic remedial reading teacher' in those days, and one school I worked at had the Janet and John phonic scheme books. The last pages were lists of phonically spelt words, and you couldn't go on to the next book until you had read all that boring stuff.
Maybe people thought that ITA was a way out of that?
My main memories of my last years as an EP (I retired in 1991) was the increasing emphasis on assesment and record -keeping. And constant changes of demands on the poor teachers 'at the coalface.'

I agree about ITA reading. But I want to a small primary school that was vertically grouped and really loved it.
They also had 100% passes at 11 plus, but that's another debate!

The (dis)integrated day.
Death by workcard: SMP Maths. SRA.
Binca.

Maybe the fact that I can't spell has nothing to do with the "ita" really trisher maybe I am just thick but it is a very good excuse.

I was an excellent speller until I taught ita then suddenly it all went to pot. Sometimes I couldn't remember which way a z went because there was one sound where it was written backwards. I realised immediately that this couldn't do children much good, but our head was insistent and what a head said was done.(sorry gillybob )

I was taught using the ITA method which probably accounts for the fact that I am am hopeless at spelling. In fact my (very bright) 8 year old DGD could beat me hands down in a spelling bee !

Now there's the best idea since sliced bread .... TAs. Never had the luxury of one in my career (though infant classes Key Stage 1 did)

Yes, all of those in the OP I remember and am happy to declare them 'MAD'

Cousins and I, all retired teachers, were discussing handwriting yesterday.
Marion Richardson - great except for those lower case bs and ps IMHO.
Italic - lovely as calligraphy but not for 'everyday'' use!
Infant 'ball and stick' - no possibility of flow
SATs' '- with the letters 'must be ALL. be joined' dikatat. Not all letters do, joins were forced whether naturally there or not. I even marked a paper where the poor child had obviously written the piece in print then gone over it again inserting joins!
Copperplate - lovely Victorian relic which appeared at least into the 1960s in chalk on railway station notice boards, especially on snowy days.

Asking a 1960s pupil what page they were on in their reading books and the sad reply being 'the words at the back'!!
Big books - 9 year old studying one archaic page of Treasure Island and thinking they had 'done'
15 years ago my DGD had no idea her class hadn't 'done' ' Diary of a Killer Cat' when I showed her the book. They had looked at the first chapter and thought that was all there was. Sad they were missing out.

Seeing a TA peeping through the windows in all the classroom doors with a tick chart. She'd been dispatched to check that everyone was on exactly the designated timescale of the Maths Strategy!

I'll stop!

I remember the stupidity that was ITA. I taught English in a secondary school and I could always tell by the pupils' spelling whether they had come from a feeder school using ITA or one using a more traditional system.