Reading: How to Teach It

CHAPTER VIII.
LESSONS TO SUGGEST PLANS OF WORK—CONTINUED.

I.—Lessons on Bird Life.

The study of birds has become so common as a part of school work, that suggestions upon the subject may be trite and superfluous. For the teachers who have not yet attempted such study, the following practical suggestions may be helpful.

All children are interested in animal life, but few city children have more than a vague notion of the habits and characteristics of the animals of which they read. Not long ago, the writer chanced to hear a class of primary children reading about the hen. The exercise was hesitating, the reading dubious. Upon questioning it transpired that but three children in the class had ever seen a live hen, and in two of these cases the hen was “nailed up in a box in the market.” One child only had seen a hen walking about, and that was in “Tim Jones’s Alley.” Obviously the sentences which had seemed so luminous to the teacher were dark to the children.

Such experiences are not confined to city children. Wide experience has discovered many a country child whose eyes have never been truly opened to the life about him. It is safe to assume that any class of little children will profit by the lesson which increases their interest in the bird world, and opens their eyes to see new beauties, their minds to receive new pictures, and which incidentally explains the pages that otherwise are meaningless.

For such preliminary study, the best beginning is the observation of some caged bird which can be kept within reach for awhile. A canary, a parrot, a dove, a hen, a duck will behave well in the school-room, may be cared for by the pupils, and observed for several days, and will serve as a centre from which new investigation may radiate, or a type to which all new bird knowledge may be referred. The canary or parrot will be brought in its own house. For the others a dwelling-place may be extemporized. A box frame may be built, open on all sides, and covered with coarse wire netting or netted fencing; or one side may be removed from a wooden box of suitable size, and netting be substituted for it. The children should be able to watch the bird as it eats, drinks, walks, or flies about, and should at first be allowed to observe without the restriction of question or recitation.

The conversation of the pupils, their exclamations and questions, will reveal the best line of approach to the subject. It will be found that their chief interest centres in the actions of the bird. “See him eat! How fast he turns the seed. See the shells fly! How he spatters the water! Oh, he’s washing himself!” Such are the free comments of the children. Let these determine the first lesson.

“You have been watching the canary. What have you seen him do? What can he do that you can do? What can he do that you cannot do?”

These questions cannot be answered without actual knowledge. If the replies are written upon the board, it will be discovered that the children have added definitely to their store of knowledge, and likewise to their vocabulary.

Another conversation may compare the cat and the canary, the cow and the canary, or (a very different exercise) may note the resemblances and differences between the canary and other birds with which the children are somewhat familiar. This comparison leads to observation of the structure, to naming and describing the parts of the canary.

“The canary can fly because he has wings. We have no wings, but we have arms. The cat has no wings, but she has two forelegs.” So the comparison proceeds to head, eyes, bill, feet, until the children are able to describe the bird in clear and appropriate language.

Another talk compares the habits of the bird with those of the cat or dog, and leads to descriptions of the nests, the eggs, the home habits of the bird, with the rearing of the young. The lessons prepare for the reading, to be sure, but this value is incidental only, as compared with the widened interest and growing power of the children in thinking, seeing, and saying.

It would be interesting to keep a record of the words used, or needed, by the children in such lessons, to collate them afterward, and to discover what proportion of the list of words is included in the ordinary stock vocabulary of elementary readers. Such a study would reveal to any intelligent teacher the close relation between experience and reading, and would fully justify the plan of work outlined in these pages.

It may be well to add in passing that such a series of lessons serves as a basis to which all the related lessons may be referred. When the children read about the oriole or the robin, he is compared with the canary, and the old lesson explains and reënforces the new. The value of such lessons depends upon the teacher’s recognition of this relation. The children need not know the skeleton of her plan, but she must know the end from the beginning.

II.—Study of “The Builders”—Longfellow.

PREPARATION FOR THE POEM.

If the readers are young children, it would be well to prepare for the reading of the poem by a lesson upon the material building. It is possible that the carpenters and masons are already at work in the immediate neighborhood of the schoolhouse. The children have been interested in watching the digging of the cellar, the laying of the foundation stone, the fixing of the frame in position, the building of the walls. A little questioning and observation will lead them to see how necessary it is to the strength of the building that every part be well shaped and firmly placed. There may be unfortunate examples in their neighborhood which show the folly of dishonest building. They may easily be led to realize what harm may result from slighting any piece of work, or falsely covering any weakness. Anecdotes are abundant to illustrate this: the bridge which gives way beneath the weight of the passing train, carrying hundreds to death; the dam which has weak timber, yielding to the pressure of the freshet; the elevator which falls with its precious load. These point to building which was insecure and treacherous. For the other side of the picture, we turn to the old cathedrals, showing the children the beautiful spires, the exquisite carving, and telling them how they have endured through the ages because their builders did honest work.

Such a lesson prepares for the interpretation of the poem, which turns our thought to the building which we are shaping with our to-days and yesterdays. The lesson of the unstable wall, the falling bridge, as well as the grace and strength of the cathedral, serve now as a parallel for the poet’s teaching, and the inevitable result to others is seen as well as felt when we read of the “broken stairways, where the feet stumble as they seek to climb.” After such lessons, every line is filled with meaning as the children read and re-read the inspiring poem. Then it is time to memorize every line, but especially the two stanzas,

It is not necessary to preach while teaching this poem. The lesson impresses itself upon the children if they are rightly prepared for it. They will make their own application, but we should not forget that a valuable lesson like this is not measured by ease in recitation or accuracy in reading. If in the days to come the memory of the poet’s words gives strength in the hour of temptation, or incites to honest work when the hand inclines to careless shirking, the lesson will have counted for good. In selecting our poems for our children, and in directing their reading, such hope should guide our choice. The words of the poem or story will recur again and again when the memory of the school-room has faded. We should be assured that the minds of our pupils are furnished with thoughts worth remembering. “Whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

III.—Study of the Reading Lesson.

ILLUSTRATIVE LESSON.

The poem selected for this lesson is suitable for use in third, fourth, or fifth grades, although even younger children enjoy hearing it read. Such children would, however, find difficulty in a detailed study, such as is suggested in this exercise. The poem may be used simply as a reading lesson, or it may be read, studied, and memorized by the pupils as a language exercise. The various advantages of the study are indicated in the following suggestions, which are intended to indicate merely some of the different modes of treatment which may be attempted in language teaching.

THE THOUGHT IN THE POEM.

As in all lessons, the children should read the entire poem, or hear it read, before any detailed study is attempted. This is done in order that the poem may be presented to them as a whole, giving its thought or telling its message. After such reading, every verse and word will assume its rightful place in the description of the story. Otherwise, given separately, the words lose the meaning which they are intended to convey. A poem, like a picture, should be presented as a whole, and never dissected, in the first lesson.

It is wise, sometimes, to read and to re-read without note or comment; then to lay aside the book and leave the children to recall the story, and to accustom themselves to its pictures. At the next lesson, the teacher may question, following out any of the suggested lines of work.

The important motive is to get the message which the author intended to give us in the poem. Everything else must be subordinate to this purpose. Any supplementary teaching which draws the attention away from the poem, creating a separate centre of interest, is excessive. All illustration and explanation should be intended simply to throw light upon the poem, making the pictures more vivid and the message more plain.

The thought in this poem is very evident, even to the children. In the first stanza the blackbird on the beechwood spray introduces us to the pretty maid, “slow wandering” his way. She is little Bell. Sitting down beneath the rocks, she asks the blackbird for his best song. The bonny bird pours his full heart out freely, while, in the little childish heart below, all the sweetness seems to grow and grow, and shine forth in happy overflow from the blue, bright eyes. The squirrel swings and leaps and frolics in the glade, and at the child’s bidding drops down great ripe nuts into her lap. The blackbird pipes to see the fun. The child shares her treasures with the squirrel and the bird, and again the poet tells us

When, at close of day, the child kneels to pray beside her snow-white cot, an angel pauses to hear, and asks what good child prays so lovingly beside her bed. The blackbird answers from the orchard croft, “Bell, dear Bell!” “Whom God’s creatures love, God doth bless with angels’ care,” the angel murmured. “Child, thy bed shall be folded safe from harm. Love, deep and kind, shall watch around, and leave good gifts behind, little Bell, for thee.”

Even the little children sense the meaning of the poem. They have already learned that love wins love and makes friends, and they feel it to be both natural and just that the loving little Bell shall be shielded from all harm, and sheltered by loving thought. The elder children may be reminded of Sidney Lanier’s poem, “How Love Sought for Hell,” failing to find it because wherever his presence came there were kindness and light. The little ones are reminded that the mirror gives back smile for smile, and frown for frown. It is hardly necessary to “point the moral and adorn the tale.” The poet has repeated in the self-same words the lines which show how the child grew in sweetness as she played so lovingly with her woodland friends. For many classes it would be enough to talk of the poem until the children were possessed of this thought, or rather this feeling, and then leave it to do its own work. In this case, however, the poem serves as a text for the lesson, and we shall consider other phases.

The Pictures in the Poem.

The poem takes us at once to the woods where the blackbird pipes on the beechwood spray. We see the rocks, the dell, the glade, the trees, the hazel shade, and are made acquainted with the blackbird and the squirrel. Plainly, the setting of the poem is clearest to those children who themselves have played in the woods; who have heard the blackbird sing, and have seen the squirrel leap from bough to bough. The beechwood spray, the hazel shade, the dell, the glade, the fern, are already familiar to such children, and need no lesson to introduce them. But if the tenement house, the narrow alley, the brick walls, and the noisy street have been the familiar surroundings of the children, and if the country seems as far away to them as Paradise, the poem is written in a foreign tongue. With such children, other lessons are necessary before any such selection is read or memorized. These lessons may not be given at the time of the reading—far better not; but they should precede the reading in the teacher’s plan, and the young reader should enter upon this lesson equipped with some knowledge of the bird, the squirrel, and the woods. In another chapter, something has been said of the necessity of such teaching, and of the way in which such lessons may be conducted. The suggestion is made here simply to emphasize this truth: that observation of nature is essential to the interpretation of literature.

Study of the Vocabulary of the Poem.

Although the pupils may be prepared by their out-of-door experience to understand the poem, they will, nevertheless, be met by a new difficulty in the reading. The language of literature differs from that to which they have been accustomed in conversation. The tendency of our school readers and children’s books is often to remove such difficulties from the path of the children. The lessons are expressed in words already familiar to the children, and in colloquial forms. While this practice renders the first lessons in reading easy, it makes the entrance to literature difficult. Many expressions are entirely foreign to the child’s ear, and therefore unintelligible, even when the story is attractive. The poem which we are using for illustration contains many words and phrases which the children have not met in their ordinary reading. These must be explained and their meaning made familiar to the children. “‘What’s your name?’ quoth he”; “stop, and straight unfold”; “showery curls of gold”; “gleaming golden locks”; “bonny bird”; “blackbird piped”; “dell”; “glade”; “hazel shade”; “void of fear”; “hies”; “golden woodlights”; “adown the tree”; “playmates twain”; “an angel shape”; “crooned the blackbird in the orchard croft,” are some of these.

It may not be necessary nor wise in most classes to study all these expressions minutely, but they should become plain to the children so that they may plainly speak the message of the poem, and present no difficulty if met elsewhere. So with the figurative expressions: “The bird did pour his full heart out freely”; “the sweetness did shine forth in happy overflow”; “thy bed shall be folded safe from harm”; “stop, and straight unfold.”

There is no reason why the young readers should not come to realize the picture in these figurative expressions, to compare their several words with the figure which the poet has used, and to begin to sense the difference between the plain, straightforward speech and the pictured verses of the poet. Such study, however simple, will help the children to some appreciation of the beauty of expression, which is one charm of literature.

From what has been said, it will be rightly judged that the poem affords a basis of several lessons, all of value in different directions. It may not be wise to make a detailed and careful study of every poem which is read or memorized by the children, but some teaching in the lines suggested is indispensable to intelligent reading on the part of the children. The phrases which are so familiar to us often suggest a very curious idea to the children. This interpretation is shown when they draw pictures to represent the scenes of the poem. In a certain school, the teacher read a story to the children containing the expression, “his mother gave him leave to go.” The child drew the mother in the act of presenting a leaf to the boy. “Fret-work,” said the boy who read “Sir Launfal” for the first time, “fret-work is work that makes you fret”; while the child who drew the picture of the hare and the tortoise represented a turtle and a boy with bushy hair. Reference has been made elsewhere to the kid on the roof of the house which was pictured as a little boy; and the writer remembers the pictures which were drawn by children in illustration of the above poem, representing the angels with webbed feet. These items are intended simply to suggest that the child’s crude notion is often very different from the meaning which the word or phrase conveys to us. We should be grateful for the frank question or the crude remark which betrays the child’s mistake, and should be careful to secure such confidence and freedom in our classes as will enable us to discover what the children are really thinking.

After reading and discussing the poem, the children may memorize it. At this juncture it is wise for the teacher to read it to the children again and again in order that they may get some notion of the proper reading. The children’s recitation will incline to adopt the virtues of the teacher’s reading; the faults will be imitated, also.

If, after such study and such memorizing, the words of the poem appear now and then in the children’s conversation or writing, let us rejoice; for this means not simply that new words have been added to the vocabulary, but that the child has a new conception of beauty of thought and speech.

CHAPTER IX.
THE STUDY OF PICTURES

Children delight in pictures. Every child-lover knows how intently and with what delight the baby’s eyes gaze upon the pages of the beloved picture book, long before the words which describe the picture can be spoken or even understood by the young student. The childish chatter is an attempt to express the delight in the treasure and the thoughts suggested by the picture.

As the child grows older, pictures continue to be a source of pleasure. He names the familiar objects, talks about them, asks questions about them. Thus he unconsciously grows in the power to see and to tell what he sees, taught by the many willing helpers who turn the pages of his book and interpret its pictures.

Many a new idea creeps into the child’s mind by the path of the picture book. Many an object which would be entirely foreign to his experience otherwise, becomes familiar through its pages. Every new book put into his hands is first challenged by him to discover whether it contains pictures, and it is the pictures that first excite his desire to learn to read the story which they illustrate.

We cannot estimate the contribution which such books make to both knowledge and vocabulary. Most of us can think of scenes which we know only through their pictured semblances, yet seem to know well. We can remember our first glimpses of scenes that pictures had made familiar. How friendly, how well known they seemed! How we were used to them! Niagara, Westminster Abbey, the Pyramids, the Alps, are known to many of us only through pictures. Are we entirely ignorant, then, of their beauty or their grandeur? When our eyes first look upon them, shall we not greet them as already a part of our possession?

We have been slow, in our school work, to follow the teaching of children’s experience. Although we have always known and always recognized the child’s interest in pictures, we have not used them in the school-room to the extent that they might have been used, nor in such a manner as to yield the greatest advantage.

The writer remembers a class of children in whose hands were placed some new readers beautifully illustrated with full-page pictures. The new books, which had just been brought into the room, were given to the children with the brief direction, “Turn to page 85 and begin reading at the top of the page.”

The obedient fingers turned to the page indicated, and the curious eyes were allowed no moment to linger over the pages which tempted them with their fascinating pictures. Yet here was the “Delectable Land,” which might have been opened to them to their lasting advantage. Here the children’s interest was assured, and no artificial incentive needed to be presented.

Another class, under similar conditions, had a different experience.

“Here are new books,” the teacher said to the children. “You will enjoy reading these stories, I know. But you will find pictures in them as well as stories. Before we read let us look at the pictures and enjoy them.”

The children eagerly opened the books. They found, as a frontispiece, a copy of Rosa Bonheur’s “Norman Sire.”

The children talked about the picture, compared the horse with horses that they knew, admired the noble head, the fine eyes. As they turned the pages of their books they found other pictures of animals, “The Lions at Home” and “Coming from the Fair.” Their comments were free, their questions ready. Nobody thought of the picture as a picture. The conversation centred about lions and horses only, and expressed the children’s interest in animals.

It was the teacher who called the attention of the children to the name written underneath the first picture, “Rosa Bonheur.” This, they inferred, must be the name of the one who made the picture.

The teacher then explained that the pictures in the book were copied from photographs of the original pictures which the artist painted. If the children were to see the painting they would find it colored and much larger than the copies.

Looking again and with a new interest at the other pictures, the children discovered the same name written below them. “Did Rosa Bonheur paint this picture, too?” “And this?” “Did she paint any others?” “Does she paint now?” These questions answered, the children asked, “Who painted the picture of the little girl tending the baby?” “Is this the painter’s name under the picture?” “Yes, Meyer von Bremen. On this page you will find another picture of his.” The children found the picture of “The Pet Canary,” and talked earnestly about it. “I like that picture. I wonder if this is the same little girl.” “What queer chairs!” “What a funny window!” “This girl has been knitting, too.”

The teacher threw some light upon the German interior, explaining that this was a picture of a home in the country where the artist lived. Then she questioned, “What did Meyer von Bremen paint for you?” “Children,” was the ready response. “And what did Rosa Bonheur paint?” “Animals,” came quite as readily. “Do the pictures tell you anything about the artists?” The children hesitated. “You remember ‘The Children’s Hour’?” suggested the teacher. “You thought that Mr. Longfellow wrote about children”—“Because he loved children,” volunteered a child, as the teacher paused. “I should think Meyer von Bremen liked children, too,” observed another, thoughtfully. “And Rosa Bonheur must like animals,” added a third.

They turned again to the pictures, and decided, after some discussion, that Rosa Bonheur not only loved animals, but was able to make us love them better by her painting.

The books were closed and carefully put away till time could be given for the reading, which the children now so earnestly desired. The lesson had been a simple one. To some casual observers it might have seemed no lesson at all. “Just looking at pictures!” But it opened to the pupils a new line of thought, and served to illuminate both picture and text. When the children read, the pictures, now made to interpret the text, themselves became teachers.

Though seemingly incidental, the lesson pointed toward such study of pictures as should obtain in every school. One of the greatest pleasures of life is the delight in art, the creations of minds that enjoy the beautiful, and know how to make the world beautiful for others. We have learned to give to young children the poems which the world treasures. They commit these to memory. They learn to sing the hymns which the greatest of musicians have composed. In poetry, in music, we have begun to learn how to teach. But should we not teach the children to know and to love good pictures, as well as good poems and good music?

In too many of our homes the picture is a stranger. Such teaching as tends to interest the children in the picture gallery or the art museum opens another avenue of pleasure and profit, adds one more resource to the lives which must often be hindered and bound. By all means, let us begin it, and learn how to use the wealth of material which lies at our hand.

In a Boston school the teacher has established a loan collection of pictures. The children have the privilege of keeping for a week the framed pictures which they choose to carry home. They learn to enjoy the pictures, and, so to speak, to read them. They look with new interest at all other pictures which come in their way, comparing them with the ones they have come to know. They visit the art museum and study the original from which their pictures are copied. Their lives are enriched by such teaching, their minds are furnished with pleasant memories, and their love of the beautiful is set growing.

Such study has a legitimate place in the school curriculum. Happily, it is now emphasized in some degree in the Drawing. It should also appear in connection with the Reading. The picture is intended to throw light upon the lesson which is illustrated. The children should be taught to read the picture as well as to read the story.

Geography, as it is presented in good schools of the present day, well illustrates the necessity. The picture is often a photographic reproduction of the mountain, the cascade, the geyser, the surf. The text describes, as clearly as words can describe, but the picture is far more faithful. It brings the scene before the eyes of the child, while words, misapplied or misunderstood, often build a wall between the pupil and the scene which they attempt to portray. If the children learn to see all that the picture contains, they are helped in their study of the text. It is the part of wisdom, from the teacher’s point of view, to make much of these aids, even if knowledge getting is the one goal in sight. It can hardly be doubted, however, that all teachers will recognize the greater need which is satisfied by such instruction. To know and to love these things so well worth knowing and loving is quite as worthy of achievement as the mastery of equations or the demonstration of a theorem.

If the Drawing does not admit of the teaching suggested, the Language Lesson, ever hospitably inclined, may be extended to include the study of the picture. Every teacher knows best what pictures she desires to present to her class, but, from common experience, a few inferences may be made.

Certainly the picture chosen for initial study should be one whose subject is interesting to the children, a picture which represents action or suggests a story. Such pictures are Schreyer’s “Imperial Courier,” Meyer von Bremen’s “Little Nurse,” Millet’s “Angelus,” Landseer’s “Saved.” After the children have become interested in the picture they will wish to learn who painted it, just as they desire to know about the poet, after they have come to enjoy the poem. Then they are ready to look at the reprints of the other works of the artist, regardless of subject, and to ask questions about the artist and his works. So the interest deepens and the study grows, following this natural order.

Fortunately the abundance of cheap good reprints, and the careful illustration of text-books, place the means for such study within the reach of every teacher and pupil. It will not be long before the picture will take its proper place with the song and the poem as a factor in elementary education.

CHAPTER X.
HINTS FOR READING LESSONS.

Words at the Head of the Lesson.

It is not uncommon to find the lists of words which precede or follow the lessons of the so-called “regular reader” used as the only basis of the study of the lesson. This would be wise if the lists enumerated the only or the chief obstacles to the children’s understanding of the lesson. But as a matter of fact, they must vary greatly in value, sometimes bearing no relation to the real needs of the individual class. They are prepared with the average child in mind, but as some one has humorously said, “The average child does not exist.” They may prove very helpful to one class, and of no possible use to another.

Examine any such list with reference to your own class, or ask the children to study the list with you. You find that the first word is an old friend, the second is made up of two known words, the third is unfamiliar in both meaning and form, the fourth presents a variation from the ordinary rule of spelling, the fifth and the sixth are easy to master or are already well known.

After such a survey, the thoughtful pupil will “study” the third and fourth critically and carefully, the others having been disposed of in the first reading. Such an exercise is profitable, deserving the name of study. The routine direction, “Study the words at the head of the lesson twenty times, and copy them five times,” leads to careless droning over the page and ends in preventing any intelligent study.

Reading “Without the Book.”

A visitor in a primary school was astonished by the rapid and fluent reading of a five-year-old who delivered “The Story of a Dog” with remarkable ease and precision. “May I see your book?” the visitor asked. The little lad passed the book to her with smiling consent. “But,” she exclaimed, “there is nothing here that you have read.” “Dear me!” cried the child, looking at the picture, “I got the wrong dog.”

The writer remembers a child who explained with charming naïveté, “I can read my reader all through without the book.” Upon being tested, he proved his statement.

The constant repetition of the pages of the “regular reader” soon imparts this fatal facility, which often completely deceives the teacher. The ability to repeat the story, word for word, does not necessarily involve the power to recognize the words on any page. The children simply memorize the sentences to which they have so often listened, and are reciting by rote, not reading.

Just here the new lesson written upon the board, or the supplementary reading book, is effective. The new arrangement of familiar words demands thoughtful attention, and serves therefore as a test of skill. The teacher should guard against the common tendency to use a single lesson until it becomes useless.

Word Study apart from the Reading Lesson.

If the words which occur in the reading lesson present such difficulty to the children that their first efforts in reading are seriously hindered, it is wise to make the word study a separate exercise, preparing for the so-called reading lesson. This preparatory lesson, often called “the development lesson,” should make the pupils so familiar with the form of the word that it at once suggests the meaning. If the meaning itself is new, there is need also of the explanatory or illustrative lesson. It may be wise to repeat the suggestion that the explanation does not always explain, and that special illustration is necessary in presenting new ideas to the children. In any case, however, the time taken for “sounding” the word, or the necessity for explaining its meaning, is an interruption to the reading as thought getting, and should be reduced to the lowest terms in the reading exercise. The better plan, with classes of young children, is to arrange a separate time for word study, as a preliminary to individual study of the lesson. Where it is possible to secure the necessary time, the order of the work might be as follows:

1. Class study of new words, with explanation and illustration by the teacher when necessary.

2. Individual study of the lesson at desks, or “busy work” employing new words.

3. Reading the lesson which has been studied.

4. Supplementary reading, sight reading, or review.

This plan is especially adapted to the first year of school, where the time is largely given to language and reading. In the class study phonics finds its proper time and place. In the seat work children make some application of the knowledge just acquired. When the reading exercise takes place, the time should be given to reading, the attention being held to the thought in the lesson.

Supplementary and Sight Reading.

The supplementary book is intended to afford variety in practice for the young readers, and to prevent the memorizing process, with its hindrance to reading. Its use depends upon circumstances. It should sometimes be used as is the “regular reader”: studied, read, and re-read—that is, if it is worth re-reading. It may be given to the pupils for silent reading only, or for individual reading when other work is done. Selected lessons from the supplementary reading may alternate with those of the more familiar book, or the books may be changed from week to week.

In “sight reading,” so called, the book serves simply as a test of the pupil’s power to read at sight, without definite preparation in the way of study. Such exercises should, of course, present no new difficulty which demands study. As soon as this becomes necessary, the character of the exercise is changed, and it becomes a “study of a lesson” instead of a test or review. The teacher should select, for sight reading, material of a simpler sort than that which is demanded in the current exercises in reading at that period. Second Grade classes may read First Readers. Third Grade classes may use Second Readers, and so on.

Of course this provision becomes useless as soon as the pupils have passed the “learning to read” stage, and are reading for the sake of thought getting only, without reference to training in power to read. Then the supplementary books should be chosen purely with an eye to throwing light on other subjects studied, or for their literary value, and pleasure in reading. Mention has been made elsewhere of the value of school libraries as an aid to the reading habit. Here the Supplementary Reader loses its title, and advances to the grade of a “real book.” Now the cultivation of the reading habit and the love of books is an immediate aim, and the book ceases to serve as a test merely. It is a means to an end, an instrument by whose use new knowledge can be gained or the pleasure of life enhanced. Therefore it is wise to spend carefully the money devoted to books, buying few of a kind, and many kinds now. For reference, for individual reading, for reading to the class, this collection of books is invaluable. The skilful teacher will plan many exercises which will reach far beyond the immediate lesson in their beneficent results.

Reading Poetry.

Among the many school-room exercises which yield present profit, none other continues its dividends so far into the future as does the intelligent reading and memorizing of a good poem. It has been urged elsewhere that the teacher should frequently read good poetry to the children, often without comment, but sometimes repeating the reading again and again, until the children become familiar with the rhythm, question the meaning, and are ready to memorize the poem. Such exercises are immediately helpful in other reading, while they store the sturdy young memory with treasures, promising enjoyment for future years, which can be gained in no other way. Childhood is the one fit season for amassing such wealth. It is well for the children if the teacher recognizes this opportunity. Just here it may be wise to refer to the interest which attends such exercises in schools where every class chooses a class poet, reading and memorizing selections from his works, and learning something about his life. From the lowest to the highest grade this work proves helpful, and the children’s association with these authors is never forgotten. Something the memory will hold, do what we may. Let us supply materials worthy to endure, preventing the accumulation of stuff which is not merely of indifferent value, but is often positively harmful.

Friday Afternoons.

The old custom of setting aside a part of Friday afternoons for declamation and recitations is remembered with mingled feelings by the pupils who shared its advantages. Nevertheless the custom should be perpetuated, for such exercises afford an unusual opportunity for practice in reading and reciting for the sake of others. To read aloud so that our hearers can listen with pleasure, gives us the power and privilege of helping and pleasing others. No life is without such opportunities. It is wise to emphasize this accomplishment in our schools, and to expect our pupils to become competent to render this service.

Any exercise which accustoms the children to reading or reciting with ease, modesty, and simplicity, in the presence of, and for the sake of, others, adds materially to their ability to make themselves agreeable as well as useful.

The special exercise, when one class entertains another class in the hall, or when children recite for the audience of schoolmates and parents, differs from the ordinary exercise in motive. Why should one read plainly when everyone else holds a similar book and is reading the same paragraph? But to read to those who have no book, have never read the story, or really desire to hear it, that is another matter.

So, with no artificial manner, voice, or gesture, but with a pure and simple desire to please, let the children read and recite to one another, or to other classes, at least once a week, until the exercise becomes as natural as breathing. And let the power to thus minister to others become one of the common attainments of our pupils.

Children as Teachers.

The child’s interpretation of that which he reads is often very different from the teacher’s. Yet his rendering does not always disclose his thought. Conversation regarding the lesson brings out the children’s notions, if there is freedom and confidence in the presence of the teacher. But nothing else affords so much light on the subject as the children’s own questions, if they are allowed to question one another. Where the teacher monopolizes the questions, she often monopolizes the thinking, too. Let the children act the part of the teacher, and as they question one another, their own ideas will appear, while the teacher who listens thoughtfully will be able to teach according to the revelation which she hears.

Management of the Reading Class.

The abandonment of concert reading at once necessitates the reorganization of the reading class. “If I cannot have my children read in concert,” one questions, “how can I keep them interested and attentive through the long reading hour?”

The way of escape from the difficulty is a simple one. Do not expect to arrange to have fifty pupils read at one period, unless there is some work worth doing to demand their attention. The plan of work will vary with the grade of the class and the aim of the lesson.

Is the teacher’s purpose to introduce the class to the lesson thought? To teach them how to study the lesson? To discover what words or phrases or turns of expression present obstacles to the learners? Then fifty may be taught and questioned as well as one, and just as long as general interest and attention can be maintained—no longer.

Is the aim of the teacher to afford practice in oral reading, by drilling upon the rendering of a certain paragraph? Then let her limit the class to ten or twelve at most, leaving the other pupils to busy themselves with written work which admits of definite accomplishment. All pupils become weary of the countless repetitions of their mates, in their stumbling practice. They learn chiefly through their own doing, the correction of their own mistakes. And while the drill is confined to the few,