There are different methods used in schools today, probably very different from the way I was taught. I'm 49, so it's hardly surprising!

Anyway, I remember how I learnt to read very well. It's quite a vivid memory for me.

First the teacher began by writing the letter forms on a blackboard, then we learnt the phonetic sounds of the letters. We copied the letters the teacher had shown us into a lined exercise book. I can remember writing rows and rows of each letter until perfect.

We were also given a reading book. The books we used were called "Kathy and Mark" - which were basic reading books designed for children.

The words to learn for the next lesson were written on little pieces of paper which I stored in a sweet tin. We were taught to sound out the letters of each word, in order to work out what each word was. At home, we were asked to learn the words for the next day, and to practice reading from these books with our parents. We would repeat the reading in class the next day while the teacher listened. The words we had learnt were also written in our exercise books each day.

We were also taught simple pronunciation rules like "e at the end makes the o sound oh", "e at the end makes the a sound ay", for words like home, and name, etc, etc.  I remember repeating those rules out loud with the rest of the class.

From time to time, the teacher would read aloud to the whole class, and we would copy down what was said in our best handwriting. The teacher would mark these later, and would give the best students a gold star stuck in their exercise book. Other exercises also included spelling tests, and reading out loud in class, and comprehension tests where we would be asked questions about the text we had read.

Obviously when I was taught to read and write, there was no such thing as a spell check!