During grade school (I believe it was in 7th or 8th grade), one of my
teachers had a teaching aid that was used to increase students'
reading comprehension.  It was a box about the size of a very small
file cabinet, containing many different color-coding reading units. 
Each unit essentially looked like a folder (heavy paper stock, folded
in half, kind of like a manila envelope).  You would read the 3-4 page
story written on the folder and then answer the questions at the end
of it in order to show how much of the story you comprehended.  As you
completed stories, you worked your way up through the colors (there
were several stories for each color, and the colors became
progressively harder, testing higher levels of reading comprehension -
I recall tan and lime being some of the harder units).  I seem to
recall that this was called SRS (possibly for Sustained Reading
Studies), but I could be completely wrong about that or confusing it
with something else.

My question is: what was this teaching aid called and is it available
anywhere?

Hi emerick,


   There isn't really a specific name for this. Each company calls it
what it feels like. For example, Rainbow Reading. Below is a link
which has information on this product.


The Rainbow Reading Programme
http://www.lioncrest.com.au/special.htm
The reading material provides an accurate gradient of difficulty.
There are six levels of colour-coded books (81 titles in total), each
with cassettes, especially designed and written for students at these
levels:
RED 6–7 yr reading level  ORANGE 7–8 yr reading level  
YELLOW 8–9 yr reading level  GREEN 9–10 yr reading level  
BLUE 10–11 yr reading level  VIOLET 11–12 yr reading level
Books @ A$6.95, Tapes @ A$12.95, Teacher materials @ A$49.95 each


Some additional information you may be interested in :


Tadpoles
http://www.koalabooks.com.au/titles/Tadddy%20info.html
The Bridging Books (lime, yellow, red) are highly-illustrated books
with fascinating stories divided into chapters. They bridge the gap
between children's picture books and novels and is ranged in levels
and offers both fiction and non fiction. A picture book approach to
page layout, editing and story selection has been adopted which gives
the reader more confidence than with other approaches.
The First Novels (red, blue) are conventional junior fiction and non
fiction.


Studywiz - Software
http://www.inclusive.co.uk/reports/studywiz_review.shtml
In the same way that Switch It! Maker and Choose It! Maker have a bank
of pre-prepared materials to get you started, Studywiz has a good
variety of texts sorted into 'Themes' ranging from Fables, through
Poetry to other fiction and non-fiction texts. In each theme there are
selections of books varying in length which are colour-coded to
indicate reading difficulty so that everyone should be able to find a
good starting point.


Learning Resources
http://www.yourmojo.com/lrk/lrk.html
The lessons are colour coded by elementary division:
Primary - Designed to give children a greater awareness of their
community, while developing language skills.
Junior - Exploring the local community in depth.  A good range of
activities for an environmental studies unit, with some math thrown
in.
Intermediate - A more sophisticated examination of the community, and
students are often encouraged to analyze links between geography and
the culture of the community.
 

Self-Access Centre - Readers
http://isc.qmuc.ac.uk/SAC/Readers.htm
Colour Coding 
  Elementary (approx. 400-700 words)
  Pre-Intermediate (approx. 1000-1200 words)
  Intermediate (approx. 1400-1800 words)
  Upper Intermediate (approx. 2000-2500 words)
  Advanced (approx. 3000-5000 words)
 

I hope you found what you are looking for. If you have any
clarifications, then please feel free to ask. If you're happy, then so
am I :-)

Have a good day

Cheers,
aditya2k

Thank you for the quick responses.  SRA is the name I was looking for... :-)

I remember this as well. You are speaking of the “Reading
Laboratories” from Science Research Associates, commonly known as SRA
(and now a part of McGraw-Hill). You will be happy to know they are
still available at:

http://www.sra-4kids.com/product_info/reading/

The new sets will most likely look somewhat different from the ones
you remember from your childhood (times change) so you might want to
try finding an older set at http://www.ebay.com or another auction
site.

What was your search strategy, aditya2k-ga?