READING, WRITING, REMEMBERING
My ITA Experience
Thoughts from first grade
In response to the informative article written by Paul A. DeStefano, I was prompted to remember my own experiences with ITA. I also spent some time talking about the experience with my parents.
I was introduced to ITA reading early in first grade. This was my first introduction to reading things myself. My mother had read countless books to me and I would sometimes follow along with the words, but actually decoding the letters and words didn’t happen until first grade with ITA.
The student’s perspective
Please understand that this experience was 45 years ago, so I am trying to be as honest as I can and remember my own 6-year old reactions.
I don’t remember being told that this was a “new method”, or “different way of reading and spelling”. It was just how reading was done in the first grade, and how I would be taught to read. I remember being excited to learn to read, but I also remember not being able to do it very…
