Did anyone else do i.t.a?

[Fossil]

You'll know who you are.

Yes I did. No probs at all, smooth transition to normal English. It was a method that worked well for me.

My ex boyfriend did. He did fine out of it, but reckoned that while half the class managed fine (probably the half who would have had no problems reading anyway) the other half never recovered from it, iyswim.

Most people on here are too young to have done it - I'm too old! It was just coming in to the infant school as I left juniors iirc.

mie muthr sed i did.
I use a dictionary all the time now!!!

I missed it.

But did 'look and say' which is also crapola, and in part explains why my spelling is so dreadful.

I changed primary schools at age 7 and joined a class who had not been taught using ita. There was no difference in the attainment/ability spread as far as I could see. Both classes had around the same number of children (40) and no other adult in the room than the teacher - no assistants, parent-helpers etc.

It was certainly around when I started school in the late 1960s, and even as a five-year old I remember thinking it was completely daft. I was one of the fortunate few that could already read, and couldn't understand why the others were being taught in some weird kind of "code" which they subsequently had to unlearn before moving on to standard text. Not only was it necessary to relearn how to read the words, but also how to spell them! My own reading ability was considered nothing short of miraculous, when all I had benefited from was a mum with plenty of common sense (and time) who had concentrated on teaching me the sounds made by the letters and then building up the sounds into words, and finally moving onto simple books - just as she had been taught herself in the 1920s. I've stuck with this method with all my own children and it's never been a problem. Simple common sense really, and I'm so pleased to see that they are now using in my youngest child's classroom. Except that now it has a posh new name.

Sinthetik fonix. Enuf sed.

I did i.t.a. for my first two years of primary school in the USA, and then switched to a school (we moved to another part of the USA) where it wasn't taught. I was always one of the top in my year with my reading and spelling, and never had any problem switching from i.t.a., but that's probably how it would have been anyway. I didn't realise it had been used in the UK too as I've mentioned it to my DH and he had never heard of it and is the same age as me (almost 44).

My sister and I did it in the early 70s in Buckinghamshire, but when we moved oop north nobody else had heard of it, and I've never met anyone else who did it. My ds has just started school and it's all jolly phonics and so on, which just made me wonder if anyone else had heard of ita, especially as it was introduced here in 1961, so many of us will be, shall we say, the right vintage.

I was born in 62 and there were children in my secondary school who did ITA. They had to go through the remedial class when they arrived to be retaught to read and write. These were bright kids should have been in the top band and eventually were.
DH was taught Look and Say and that was a disaster for him. Teacher told MIL that there was no way he would learn using this method. He didn't learn until he was 10 when he was sent for remedial classes using phonics.

I started school in 1972 and remember doing ita for a while. Seemed to work for me, reading and spelling was always a strong point at school. Brother had big problems moving on to proper spelling from ita.

I did it in South Bucks too, found it confusing as my parents souldnt do my homework either- my dads dyslexic so thought the spelling was ok but not that a and e stuck together.
When we 'changed ' to ordinary we called it T.O. Have no idea what that stood for.

T.O. - I think the "O" stands for "orthography" but don't know about the "T".

Got it - it's "traditional orthography". (with help from Google!)