Dick and Jane - Grade Levels

Grade Levels

• Grade 1 — Before We Read, We Look and See, We Work and Play, We Come and Go, Guess Who, Fun with Dick and Jane and Our New Friends
• Grade 2 — Friends and Neighbors and More Friends and Neighbors
• Grade 3 — Streets and Roads and More Streets and Roads
• Grade 4 — Times and Places
• Grade 5 — Days and Deeds
• Grade 6 — People and Progress
• Grade 7 — Paths and Pathfinders
• Grade 8 — Wonders and Workers
• Transitional 3/4 — Just Imagine

In the mid-1950s, the texts for grades four, five and six were split into two books each (as was originally the pattern with the lower grades in the series) with the naming pattern adding The New in front of the title for the first book and More in front of the title for the second book in each grade, e.g., The New Days and Deeds and More Days and Deeds.

In the late 1950s, the texts for grades seven and eight were re-packaged into a Basic Reading and Literature series consisting of Book 1 (for seventh grade) and Book 2 (for eighth grade) without any of the contents changing from the original late 1940s versions. As an alternative to this more literary approach for these two grades, entirely new texts were published with shorter, simpler readings with the titles of Parades and More Parades for the seventh grade and Panoramas and More Panoramas for the eighth grade. Focusing on targeted reading and word attack techniques, a soft-cover workbook Basic Reading Skills was published for the junior high (seventh and/or eighth grade) to be used independently much as the Think And Do books were used in conjunction with the graded texts at the elementary school level. In 1960, Wide Wide World was published for the seventh grade and held a wide range of longer literary selections from authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson and Rudyard Kipling.

In the middle 1960s, the New Basic Readers underwent heavy revision. The books had a larger page size, new updated artwork, some shortened stories from previous editions and a very large portion of new stories. Dick, Jane, and Sally also were a bit older and a bit more sophisticated. Teaching procedures also were slightly different: tthe vocabulary control was looser and more phonics was added. Helen M. Robinson became the head author. The earliest materials were released in 1962. The 1962 Established edition titles were: We Read Pictures, We Read More Pictures, Before We Read, Sally Dick and Jane, Fun With Our Family, Fun Wherever We Are, Guess Who, Fun With Our Friends, More Fun With Our Friends (All Grade 1), Friends Old and New, More Friends Old and New (grade 2), Roads to Follow, More Roads to Follow (grade 3), Ventures (4), Vistas (5), Cavalcades (6), Dimensions (7), Challenges (8). In 1965, an integrated edition was added as an alternative to the established editions.

This multi-ethnic edition changed the title of the 1st and 2nd pre-primers to Now We Read and Fun With the Family to reflect the addition of an African-American family. These three children were Mike, Pam, and Penny. The content of the 1962 edition was somewhat altered to include this new family in the first grade. The other books retained the 1962 titles, yet reflected numerous multi-ethnic groups for those school systems which chose this version. The 1965 edition books were available in two covers- one featuring characters as in previous books and the other a child-art edition which did not feature any characters. Many people refer to this second cover as a "fingerpaint" cover, but the Scott, Foresman catalog listed it as "child-art". The Think-and-Do Book workbooks, which began with the Elson readers of the 1930s as Silent Reading Workbooks, were still very much a part of the 1950s and both editions of the 1960s books.

An experimental ITA (phonetic alphabet) version was launched of the multi-ethnic series in the 1960s as well.

In 1966 two companion series were launched from grades one through seven to provide for individual differences – Wide Horizons for advanced readers and Open Highways for below-average readers. Initially, the grades were indicated by Book 1, Book 2 and so on, but in later editions each grade had its own title in the series, e.g., Ready to Roll and Rolling Along were the Open Highways books for the first grade, Moving Ahead and More Power the books for the second grade, and Splendid Journey and Speeding Away the books for the third grade.

There were also Catholic editions of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s series. Sally, Dick, and Jane was retitled Judy, John, and Jean to reflect the characters who were renamed after Catholic Saints. Groups of stories in each book were replaced by Catholic-oriented stories of the saints or portrayed moral choices. Some 1960s levels also had Seventh-day Adventist versions: these versions used the 1965 multi-ethnic characters, but retitled the books. For example, Now We Read became Friends to Know, Fun Wherever We Are became Places to Know. Versions with appropriate spelling changes also were published in English in Canada by W.J. Gage. In lower grades French versions also were issued in the 1950s in Canada as well as British English versions in paperback in the UK.

Some episodes in the original would certainly raise many eyebrows now; for example, consider the sequence in which the children are given zip-up laundry bags with which to play.