INTRODUCTION
This First Reader continues the interesting exercises of the Aldine Primer—the rhymes and stories, the dramatizations and pictures—which make the child’s efforts to master the art of reading both delightful and surprisingly successful. The content is concrete, alive and full of action. The joys of happy childhood at play in the open—with the birds, the animals, the flowers, the wind, the snow and the rain—the joys of childhood’s imagination, are presented in the language of childhood and from the child’s point of view. The child finds here none of the drudgery—to him quite meaningless—so often associated with the disagreeable task of learning how to read; the child reads from the very first page—he has been reading all through the Primer—reads with delight and real understanding, reads the thoughts and feels the pleasures of childhood. Hence the not uncommon occurrence of a child’s suddenly discovering in surprise that he has learned how to read—that he can read—that he is reading—and that he likes to read!
But there is no magic about the Aldine method, if it can be called a method. Like the marvellous modern achievements of applied science, its success depends upon the simple principle of understanding and utilizing, instead of ignoring and antagonizing, nature. The child’s nature furnishes the key, the sure guide to all the method there is in Aldine reading.
The initial stock of about one hundred “sight words,” which the reading of the Primer has furnished, is increased gradually. At first most of the new words are easily acquired, as were those of the Primer, through the memorizing of simple and interesting rhymes. Such rhymes occur on pages 3, 6, 11, 15, 17, 25, 28, 33, 37, 47, 55, 75. But for the development of the power and the habit of independent mastery of new words by the child reliance is placed on the exercises in phonics, which should be systematic and constant throughout the book. Just what these exercises are and just how they are to be carried out to make them most effective are matters fully explained in the Teacher’s Manual, “Learning to Read.”
No formidable mechanism is involved in the teaching of phonics. The plan is an entirely simple and natural one. The pupil is shown how and encouraged from the outset to do quickly, directly and intelligently what he otherwise learns slowly, indirectly and unconsciously. He is taught to observe, to analyze and to compare words; he is taught to apply constantly his growing knowledge of sounds and of letters used to represent sounds. These exercises are scarcely less interesting to the child than are the rhymes, stories and dramatizing, for the child understands what he is doing and why he is doing it, and he feels the joy of increasing mastery. So rapid and sure is the child’s progress and growth in independent power that he reads at sight and reads well any interesting Primer long before he has completed this First Reader. When this book is completed he can read any properly graded First Reader, in fact almost anything that he can understand, and he can read it absolutely at sight with little hesitation and read it with intelligent expression.
Aldine Reading, as presented in this and in the other books of the Aldine Series, is vastly more important than any mere method or device for acquiring mastery of the mechanics of reading—it does lead to that mastery speedily; it is all-round, rich, sound education for the primary child; and withal it is a joy to child and teacher, as all primary education ought to be.