Reading: How to Teach It

To read,—that is, to get the meaning of these lines; or, if one reads aloud, to get and to give the meaning. One who truly reads “Snow-Bound” learns to see the scenes which Whittier so beautifully describes; to see them as he saw them, with tender affection, and to interpret the deeper meaning of the lines of “homely toil and destiny obscure.”

Manifestly this involves much. On the surface, and first attracting the attention of the teacher, appears the obvious necessity of knowing the words at sight. Familiarity with the forms of the words used is indispensable to reading. This involves knowing the sounds of the words, while the power to pronounce new words readily calls for knowledge of the laws of English pronunciation.

In the minds of too many teachers of little children, such mastery of word pronunciation is held as reading. But this is a grievous error, which leads to narrow and mechanical work, and obscures the high purpose of real reading. Reference to the definition of reading, and a study of the selection from “Snow-Bound,” will show us the proper value of this achievement and its relation to true reading. The words are the vehicle of thought, a means to an end. Their mastery is indispensable to reading, but the reader must compass, not the single word-speaking, but the meaning of the related words which express the author’s thought. Knowledge of the meaning of the words used, and especially the meaning of the words as Whittier uses them, is necessary to a clear understanding of the poem. The reader who would understand the poem must know something of farm life—the sty and the corncrib, the garden wall, the wellcurb, the sweep, and the other accessories of the farm which Whittier names or describes. Plainly, too, his knowledge must extend further—to a Chinese roof, and Pisa’s leaning miracle. To such knowledge, observation of common life must minister, coupled with the study of books and pictures. In other words, the reader interprets Whittier’s “Snow-Bound” by virtue of his own experience, reënforced by the experience of others as written down in books, or pictured with brush or pen. To the formal word-mastery, then, must be added study of the meaning of new words, or recalling such experience as explains the old. The content, as well as the form, of the word must be studied.

Added to such study, is the general training which gives us power to picture the unknown, interpreting a new scene through its relation to our old experience. The ready and trained imagination easily pictures the scene which the words conjure before the mind—makes real the homestead, snowbound and comfortfilled. Reading may be so taught as to develop this power, which takes hold on things unseen. No careful teacher omits such training.

Here, then, are different phases of teaching reading: mastery of the words as to form and sound; explanation of the meaning of new words, through observation or reading; lessons which tend to develop power of imagination.

The young child who leaves his home and his play to enter upon the life of the school-room finds a new world awaiting him, with manifold new experiences. Hitherto he has romped and rambled to his heart’s content. All his friends and playmates have in turn been his teachers, albeit theirs has been an unconscious tuition. His lessons have been in the line of his desires, or suggested by his natural environment. Longfellow pictures the little Hiawatha in the arms of his first teacher, the loving old Nokomis:

The moon, the rainbow in the heaven, the Milky Way, the firefly, the owl and owlet, the beaver, the rabbit, the squirrel—these saluted the baby boy, and awakened his interest. “What is that?” he cried, with eager question. “And the good Nokomis answered.” The little Hiawatha “learned of every bird its language.” He was taught, not by old Nokomis alone, but by bird and beast, flower and field.

So with every child who enters the school-room upon that fateful first Monday in September. He brings with him, not an empty head, but a mind stored with the memories of varied experiences. Just as the little Hiawatha gazed, pondered, questioned, learned—so this child has seen, has heard, has questioned, has thought, has acted. What he brings to school, who can tell? What has he seen and heard? What has he liked and desired? What has he questioned and learned? How little we know of this unwritten history! And yet it determines the net result of all our teaching. For nothing which we attempt to teach finds lodgment in the child mind unless it is linked with some past experience and awakens actual interest. Much of our reiterated instruction falls upon deaf ears, fails utterly to awaken the dormant interest, because it is ill chosen. We must know something about the life of the children before we can wisely teach them.

The thoughtful teacher remembers this truth and directs her work accordingly. Instead of rushing with headlong zeal into the routine of reading, writing, and number—under the impulsion of the Course of Study, and the memory of classes which failed to “pass”—she makes haste slowly, and devotes the first days of the term to lessons which help to reveal the experience of the children. Observation of and talks about common things; conversations which lead the children to tell what they can do, or like to do; story telling; picture drawing;—these afford opportunity for expression, and serve to show the teacher something of her pupils’ attainments, and the line of their interests as well. Meanwhile, they are becoming accustomed to the school-room routine, and so emerge from the period in which they gazed, dumb and dazed, at the many marvels with which this new school world is crowded. They come to know the teacher as their friend, and they become free and confident in her presence. Thus the true atmosphere of the school-room is created—the only atmosphere in which wholesome and natural teaching and learning can thrive.

This is not a prodigal misuse of time. It is the part of thrift to so spend in the beginning, for the returns are evident in the ease and readiness with which pupils and teacher afterward work together—the value of every lesson being enhanced by the mutual good will and understanding.

The school differs from the home and the kindergarten in that its allotted tasks are evidently determined by a motive and plan outside the child’s comprehension. In many cases this must be so. The lessons which involve the mastery of the symbols used in reading, writing, and number, or the drill and practice necessary to attain skill in music or drawing or writing, have no self-evident goal for the child. So many lines, so many letters, so many problems, he attempts, because the teacher says so, and in his new universe the teacher is supreme. At home he has always chosen more or less; so, too, in the kindergarten his interest and choice determined the story or the game or the topic of conversation. He has delighted in building houses, modelling balls, weaving mats, playing games—and all, so far as he knew, for his own immediate pleasure and accomplishment. Other results, to him unknown, were of course secured. He builded better than he knew. But in every case he rejoiced in some immediate accomplishment which he desired.

In too many cases the decreed exercises of the school are meaningless and purposeless to the beginner. Such exercises easily degenerate into dull and fruitless routine, indifferent and profitless to teacher and pupil alike. To arouse desire and awaken conscious motive is the teacher’s most important work, and in teaching reading it should receive first consideration. She, therefore, after securing such freedom and coöperation as promise a fertile soil for her seed-planting, calls the children about her to explain the purpose of the lessons which will fill their days.

Perhaps she reads to them a story which they like, a new story which they have never heard. When she reaches the interesting climax she pauses to say, “I haven’t time to read the rest of the story now. How I wish you could read! Then you might take the book and read the story yourselves. Would you not like to learn to read, so that you could read stories like these?”

In Hugh Miller’s graphic description of his childhood experience in reading, this element of purpose and desire is strongly emphasized. “The process of learning and acquiring had been a dark one,” he says, recalling his struggles with letters and syllables. He “slowly mastered” these “in humble confidence in the awful wisdom of the schoolmistress, not knowing whither it tended,” when (as a member of the Bible Class—“in the highest form”) his mind “awoke to the meaning of that most delightful of all narratives, the story of Joseph. Was there ever such a discovery made before?”

Such testimony might be repeated a thousand times over, by our pupils of to-day—if they were able to describe their common experience.

It was the first vision of the goal that gave meaning, motive, and conscious gladness to Hugh Miller’s study. Such motive and such meaning should pervade the earliest lessons in reading, and should be consciously recognized by pupil as well as teacher. We repeat, then: the teacher’s first effort, after becoming acquainted with her children, is to awaken this conscious desire to read, and to secure intelligent coöperation in her exercises.

One teacher suggests writing upon the board some sentence which has been whispered to her by the children, and then calling an older child from another room to read the secret. This is done again and again, until the children are eager to share the power which their comrade possesses, and turn gladly to the tasks required of them, that they may the sooner reach their goal.

There is a wide difference between such teaching and the routine drill which does not enlist the child’s desire. The enthusiastic bicyclist would smile if asked to exchange his morning ride to the city for an hour’s exercise upon a fixed “bicycle exerciser” in the back hall. Nor could the most skilful pedagogue convince him that the exercise involved in making the wheel go round is as valuable as the spin which carries him to his destination, through the fresh morning air, along roads bordered with flowered fields. Yet the contrast is no more marked than that between the task of the syllable-pronouncer, who obediently performs his meaningless labor, and that of the child who, with conscious and earnest desire, sets himself to learn to read.

In order to give some sense of immediate achievement, the sentences of the first lessons should express thoughts in which the children are interested.

• This is Kate.
• Kate can read.
• Kate has a book.
• Read to me, Kate.
• Kate can read.
• I can read, too.
• Kate has a book.
• I have a book, too.
• See Kate’s book!
• See my book!
• Kate has a doll.
• I have a doll, too.
• Kate has a kitty.
• I have a dog.
• Kate likes her doll.
• I like my dog.
• See my dog!
• See Kate’s little kitty!
• Come, little Kitty.
• Come to me, Kitty.

The object of these preparatory lessons is to give some consciousness of the purpose of reading, and some sense of achievement. The sentences are the children’s, obtained in a conversation concerning Kate, who is an older pupil, or some pictured child. The sentence is the unit, and is read by the teacher. The children repeat the sentence after her reading.

Of course these first efforts are not reading. They simply represent the children’s memory of the teacher’s words and tone. Often, when asked to read alone, the child dashes at the wrong sentence with his pointer, which vainly wanders in search of the right one. But just as the frequent observation of the loved story in the picture book not only fixes the words in their order, but enables the young listener to find some of them upon the page, so, by repetition of these first sentences, the words are at last held in the mind, and are recognized in new places and under new relations. The attentive eye will recognize the new words, first in their wonted place in the sentence, then when isolated. At first the words selected for repetition and recognition are those which present fewest difficulties;—not by any means the shortest words—as a, is, too—but the meaningful words, the nouns and adjectives, and verbs which denote action. Kate, book, doll, dog, kitty—these are the first and easiest, in the lessons written above. Later, see and likes, with can read. Later still, I have, this is—while is and a will not be emphasized as units until the eyes have been trained to distinguish more readily, and the words have become familiar through constant repetition.

Such lessons should continue for several weeks, introducing the various dear and oft-seen objects of the child’s environment, and the actions with which he has long been familiar. The sentences should be worth reading, and grouped in coherent paragraphs. Drill in recognizing the words should follow the sentence reading, in every day’s lesson.

When the children can recognize at sight a vocabulary of one hundred to two hundred words, they should begin to compare them, and to place in groups those which are alike in sound. For example: book, look, and brook are known; red and fed; cat, hat, and pat; Fan, ran, can, and Dan. Placed in lists, their similarity is evident:

• book
• look
• took

• fed
• red
• bed

• cat
• hat
• sat

• Fan
• ran
• man

Some one volunteers to increase the list, adding took, bed, sat, and man. Here is the beginning of the analysis of words into their sounds, and with this lesson a new feature appears in our word study.

Such lessons in sentence reading as have been suggested, if continued long enough and with sufficient discretion on the part of the teacher, might enable a class to read independently—for, even without the teacher’s direction, obvious likenesses and differences in words are noted by the children, and rules are deduced therefrom. But the mastery of a large vocabulary is readily secured only through attention to the common laws of pronunciation, and familiarity with the sound units. Thus far every word has been presented as a new unit. Now the children should learn that these words are like many others in form, and that the pronunciation of one serves as a key to the many. Knowing book, all monosyllables ending in ook can at once enter their vocabulary of recognizable words; knowing Fan, all monosyllables with the an ending are known. The missing factor is the knowledge of the sounds of the separate letters which are initials in these group words—m-an, F-an, c-an, r-an, t-an, p-an. At this juncture these sounds should be taught.

There has been some question among teachers as to the time for teaching sounds of the letters. It is wise to defer this teaching until the children have acquired some little facility in reading, and understand its purpose, that their work may not be approached from the mechanical side solely. Again, the vocabulary which the children already know reveals groups of similar words and suggests the wisdom of analysis and classification. And, further, the too early attempt to study the lists of similar words and to select and emphasize them for use in reading, drives the children at once to their most difficult task. It is much easier to recognize Hiawatha and arrow, because they are long and different, and seem hard, than to name promptly the elusive can, ran, and tan, which seem so easy and yet are so nearly alike as to be formidable obstacles to the success of the untrained observer. The climax of objection is reached when we cite the tendency to make sentences solely for the sake of using certain words, thus destroying the element of thought value in the sentence. “Does the fat rat see the cat on the mat?” is far more difficult for a child than is “Hiawatha lived in a wigwam with old Nokomis”—for the reasons above named.

The mastery of words is an essential element in learning to read. Our common mistake is, not that we do such work too well, but that we make it the final aim of the reading lesson, and lead the children to feel that they can read when they are merely able to pronounce words. Perhaps lack of careful attention to the form of words is quite as serious a mistake, for it results in carelessness in reading.

The study of form and of sound should be associated, but attention to sound alone should precede any attempt to master the form as suggesting sound. Children should be taught to recognize and to distinguish sounds, to repeat them accurately, to speak them distinctly, before they are taught to copy the single characters which represent these sounds. To hear, to repeat, to compare, to distinguish sounds, should be the order of the instruction.

Careless speech and indistinct articulation often arise from imperfect hearing, or indifferent attention to what is said. Children should be trained in the early lessons to hear, and to repeat, exactly what is said. The repetition is a test of the child’s hearing. Begin with short sentences. Speak them clearly, in a moderate voice, requiring the children to repeat after once hearing. Gradually increase the length of sentence, but do not increase the volume of voice; speak distinctly, and expect the children to be attentive enough to hear an ordinary tone; teach them to respond in the same tone, with clear articulation. Continue this exercise until a long sentence can be accurately returned; then pronounce lists of words beginning with letters which demand careful articulation. When these have been mastered, draw attention to initial sounds, and then to the letters which represent them. Work with these until every letter suggests its sounds to the pupils, whether in a new or in a familiar word. With little children, the sound should be taught first in connection with initial letters always.

A successful device consists in allowing each pupil to represent a certain sound. If the sound is the initial sound in his own name, it will be easy for the children to remember. Thus—John can always suggest the sound of j, Mary the sound of m, Peter the sound of p, and so on. A class of children aided in this way will master the sounds of the letters in a very short time.

Having learned, through the initials, the sounds which various letters represent, the next step will be to analyze monosyllables into their sounds. Select first those containing short vowels, in order to avoid the difficulty of the silent letter. The preliminary drill with the initials will have made this step an easy one to take.

Whenever a type word is represented, as black, for example, the children should be taught to suggest other words which rhyme with the pattern, as crack, back, lack, etc. If in every such case the common element is studied and mastered, in a few weeks the children will become possessors of a large vocabulary, whose basis is the few familiar words which they have studied. Every type word will stand for a list of words similar in form.

This study of sounds should continue through at least the first five school years. After analyzing any word into its separate sounds, the children should be required to name other known words which resemble the one studied. This will tend to a habit of classification, and will enable the pupil to depend upon himself in his study.

Diacritical marks are a help in mastering new words, if the key words have been studied in connection with the marks. They are needed also in consulting the dictionary for pronunciation. They should be taught only when necessary to the pronunciation. In older classes, after the use of the dictionary becomes necessary, a complete list should be mastered. It is a mistake to insist upon diacritical marking when the children can pronounce accurately without. I remember hearing a teacher chide a pupil for reading a sentence before she had time to mark the vowels, but, since the child could and did read without such help, the marking was evidently unnecessary. It serves as a means to an end, and should be dispensed with when the end can be reached without such artificial aid.

As a matter of fact, every child refers a new word back to a similar word with which he has become familiar. Thus: black, once mastered, serves as a key to sack, crack, quack, etc. The only elements in these words are the final element ack and the initial sounds. If a child hesitates with a new word, help him to refer at once to the type word which he has already mastered. Instead of pronouncing the new word for him, insist upon his using for himself his own stock of knowledge. Help him only where he cannot help himself. If he forms the habit of referring the unknown to the kindred known, he will become independent in study. For example, to a six-years-old child the word blacksmith may, at first sight, appear formidable. Separated into its parts and referred to the simple words already mastered, the child conquers the newcomer, and adds it to his list of servants. He is endowed with new strength, because he has mastered something which seemed to him hard. Such conquests, often repeated, lead to strength and independence. In many cases, it is wise to leave a child to wrestle with a word which at first sight he fails to master. Of course this process is unwise if he has no experience to which he can refer for help. Guess-work will never take the place of thought, and a child should not be driven to guess at the pronunciation, but every attempt should be based upon something which he has been taught in former lessons. Such practice will lead to thoughtful self-help.

This work may be facilitated by many devices. We have seen classes hunting for new words beginning with a given sound, as eagerly as if they were playing hide-and-seek. Or with the utmost enjoyment they have made lists of words beginning with chosen sounds; or matched pairs of words which rhymed. But their most valuable exercise is that in which the old familiar word of their first vocabulary is made the key which unlocks the new.

Now, when a new word is presented, the teacher no longer pronounces it for the children, but asks instead, “What word helps you to pronounce it?” Bright is not a new word, because the children know light, remember the sound of br, and put their two bits of knowledge together to meet the new emergency. They do for themselves what the teacher has heretofore done for them.

A most helpful form of word study, which is suitable for desk work, is making lists of words containing the same sound. It strengthens the habit of classification, and helps in spelling and in the recognition of new words.

The most difficult work for children appears in words which are spelled alike and pronounced differently, or in words pronounced alike and spelled differently, or in the various equivalents of the same sound which our language affords. Chair, their, where, etc., suggest the problems of this nature. This work should be introduced not earlier than the third or fourth year. It should come in connection with the spelling lesson, and not with the reading. The mastery of these difficulties in English spelling doubtless requires many months of careful teaching.

It must not be forgotten that children are hindered and not helped by any attempt to spell, by sound, words which are unique in spelling. Through, for example, should be learned by sight, and not by sound. Beautiful, tongue, physique, may illustrate this group. The eye and not the ear must be depended upon in the mastery of such words. Care should be taken to develop the habit of accurate attention through the eye as well as the ear. Any attempt to mark the sounds in these words increases the labor without increasing facility. If the teacher makes a careful classification of the ordinary words which frequently recur in the reading lesson, she will discover the class which must be mastered by sight. Out of the remainder she can make lists which include the ordinary type sounds. The study of these lists will reduce the labor of word mastery to its minimum, and the habit of comparison developed through this study will go far to make the children independent in the pronunciation of new words.

It is self-evident that this plan can be pursued only when the words are amenable to common phonic laws. Cough, and its congeners, should be named as new wholes. So with all words which follow no rule, and must be pronounced by substitution. No time should be lost by attempting a method which has no excuse for being, in such cases. In its place, as a help to the mastery of groups of kindred words, it is invaluable. Out of place, it is bad.

For diacritical marks and correct pronunciation, the teacher is referred to the standard dictionaries. It should not be forgotten that the teacher’s pronunciation is a guide to the pupil. She needs a quick ear and the careful judgment which will render her a safe guide. The familiar rule should direct her practice: When in doubt, consult the dictionary.

Note the value of this word mastery. The pupil fast becomes independent of the teacher, and ready to master the page for himself. Note, also, that this power becomes his in proportion to the teacher’s purpose to make him self-helpful, and her skill in finding the connecting link between the new knowledge and the old.

Two elements of learning to read have been presented here: sentence reading and word mastery. Of the study of the meaning of the words and the development of the power of imagination we shall speak elsewhere.

CHAPTER IV.
THE STUDY OF THE LESSON.

In our emphasis of certain phases of the new education, there is a tendency to swing away from the use of the text-book, so that the children depend largely upon the teacher’s oral instruction and explanation. It often happens that the teacher, in her zeal, forgets that the growth of the children depends upon their own doing, and imagines that her thought and experience will suffice, without effort on the part of her pupils. This state of affairs exists in the reading class oftener than in any other. Time is often wasted in smoothing out difficulties which never existed as such to the children, and obstacles are explained away before they are recognized by the child as obstacles. Meanwhile the teacher is doing the work and the pupil is losing the opportunity to gain power by wrestling with his little problems himself.

It is essential that even the little children should be taught how to study to the limit of their ability. The study of the reading lesson may be made a most profitable exercise. Too much of the occupation termed study by both pupil and teacher is an indifferent conning of the book, a careless and hurried repetition of the text, or a thoughtless copying; all of which weakens the power of attention, and tends to make the lesson dull and uninteresting. Such loss should be prevented by careful direction of the young student. The study should be at first conducted under the personal guidance of the teacher, for, until the children grow into the power of learning to work by themselves, they need to be taught how to study as well as how to read. The time spent in the preparation of the lesson should be thoughtfully employed, the exercise resulting in helpful habits as well as in increased power.

Before we can teach our pupils how to study their reading lessons, we must have a realizing sense of their difficulties in reading. This means that we must know our children as well as we would have them know their lesson. A successful teacher of little children once told the writer that she allowed her pupils a period for free conversation every day. While they availed themselves of this privilege, she listened, in order to discover in what they were interested and about what subjects they talked freely to one another. Having learned this, she began her language lessons where the children’s interest was centred, led them gradually to new interests, and helped them to overcome their limitations.

Some such study of individual children, or at least of the varying classes of children, is indispensable to the teacher who would endeavor to train her pupils to overcome the obstacles in their way. It is vain for her to assume that all classes are alike, and that a mastery of the words at the head of the lesson will properly equip them all for the feat of rendering the thought which the lesson contains. Such easy assumption ends in failure. The children differ in attainment and in experience. We cannot take for granted either knowledge or ignorance on their part. We must study their experience in order to know their limitations and their needs.

A class of children of foreign parentage was engaged in reading a fairy tale which described the adventures of a wee robin on his way to sing a Yule song to the king. Evidently the children were not accustomed to imaginative tales, and, moreover, they had the dimmest possible notions of the wee robin, the gray, greedy hawk, the Yule song, and the king. Their reading was dull, monotonous, and indifferent, accomplished by dint of constant suggestion and explanation on the part of the teacher, and wearisome though patient repetition on the part of the children.

The exercise, though termed reading, was in reality simply a preparation for reading. It would have been greatly improved by a conscious recognition of its import by both teacher and pupils. They were studying the lesson together and aloud. Had it been thoughtfully studied in this way before reading was attempted, both exercises would have been more helpful to the pupils.

This same class was afterwards questioned in regard to home reading. Not one pupil was accustomed to read or to hear reading at home. In few homes were there any books, while story-telling was a practice of which they had never dreamed. Obviously these children had in their home experience a meagre preparation for reading, and the teacher’s duty was consequently a double one. In such an instance the reading lesson would be entirely robbed of its value if the proper study of the lesson were omitted.

For preliminary study, therefore, it is well for the teacher to use the period assigned to reading in talking with the class about the lesson, her object being not to tell what she knows, but to discover what the children know or do not know. To this end she will bend a listening ear to all mistakes, not to waive them away, nor to smile at the awkward interpretation, but to see from what limitation they arise. Knowing their source, she can help to correct them by removing the cause. Such attention to the errors or the questions of the children discloses two classes of difficulties: those which the children can overcome by thought or by observation, and others in which the teacher must of necessity furnish the necessary explanation. For example, a class in a primary school read, and with fair expression, the story of “a kid upon the roof of a house that railed at a wolf passing by.” The teacher, knowing her class, assumed their ignorance of the meaning of “railed”—was not surprised at the suggestion that “the kid fired a rail at the wolf”—and by her explanation made clear the meaning of the word. She was surprised, however, in the course of the study conversation, to discover that to the majority of the class “kid” stood for little boy. Nothing in the wording of the fable or in the children’s experience served to correct the impression. Again the duty devolved upon the teacher.

Obviously, in such cases the children must depend upon the teacher. To withhold aid at the right time is to make the study fruitless and the children indifferent or discouraged. On the other hand, by means of just such united exercises in study the children will learn to measure their own understanding and to point out their own limitations.

Fancy the class, described above, as having been taught to study, and therefore having wrestled alone with the fable. Upon coming to the recitation, some are conscious of their ignorance and say at once, “I do not know what ‘railed’ means.” They have studied to some purpose, have made themselves ready for their teacher’s explanation—and for helping themselves by means of the dictionary. The other difficulty presented by the slang use of “kid” would of course fail to present itself to their consciousness.

One result, then, of the preliminary study, with or without the teacher, should be to help the children to discover the “don’t know” line; the second should be to enable them to help themselves, if possible. Through careful and conscious study, they may be helped to realize the “sense” of what they read, and to judge for themselves when they fail to get the meaning of the sentence.

From the beginning, the children should be shown that every sentence is an embodiment of a thought, every word having its place in the expression of that thought.

“A saucy robin is eating the ripe cherries in the tree under my window,” the children read. The teacher studies with them for a moment. What does the sentence tell them? Who is eating the ripe cherries? What kind of robin? What is he doing? What is he eating? What cherries is he eating? Where is the tree? What word tells us what kind of a robin is eating? What words tell where the cherries are? What word tells who is eating the cherries? Even in primary schools such questioning is valuable, leading the children to realize that the words appear in the sentence, not by chance, but in order to express something; that every word has its work, that not one can be omitted, that a change in a single word changes the thought. Such exercises, thoughtfully conducted, will lead the children to look for the thought in the sentence, and will make its mastery a test of their success. If the sentence does not yield them a thought which they understand, let them question every word until they get its meaning. Thus they learn to recognize the line where their knowledge ends and their ignorance begins.

It is often the case, however, that the difficulty to be overcome is the pupils’ inability to pronounce words whose meaning may be familiar. If this is the case, they will need to bring all their knowledge of words to bear upon this new problem. “Sidewalk” is a long word, a new word—no one knows it. The teacher helps, not by pronouncing it and easing the children of their load. No. She says: “That word seems long, but it is very easy. You know the first syllable.” Yes, everybody knows “side.” “Now, who knows the second? Who can put them together?” The children rejoice in the sense of overcoming. They have gained some power to help themselves. Our teaching should compel as well as invite such thoughtful comparison of the old with the new, should lead the children to use what they have learned, in the mastery of the not learned.

The simplest lessons in preparatory study are thus justified: they lead to a conscious judgment of one’s attainment. Study means nothing if it does not lead to this judgment. The power once gained, the pupil is his own best teacher, his own strongest helper. Prize, then, all exercises which lead to this judgment. Instead of saying to the untrained pupil, “Read your lesson ten times,” when his present attainment or lack of attainment renders such repetition worse than useless, you will say, “Read the lesson and copy all the words whose meaning you do not know.” “Read and copy the words that you cannot pronounce.” “Read and copy the sentence that you do not understand.” “Read so carefully that you are sure you can read well to the class.”

The skilful teacher will think of a hundred devices to advance such study. The test of each device will be, “Does it help to arouse thought? Does it end in thoughtful study?”

Such study is necessary before reading whenever we may assume that the lesson presents any difficulty to the child, unless we prefer that the first oral rendering of the lesson shall be merely a studying aloud.

As a stimulus to, or a test of, study, it may be well to omit the oral reading occasionally, substituting for it an exercise in silent reading, whose thoroughness is tested by questions. After the usual study of the lesson the books are closed and the teacher calls upon the pupils to tell her what they have read. Older pupils may respond by giving the substance of the lesson. Younger children may be tested by more frequent and detailed questions after the reading of short paragraphs.

The above exercise is even more helpful if the children share in the questioning. They read with keener interest if their knowledge is thus put to the test.

Such exercises tend to emphasize to the pupils the truth that their reading is not for itself, but to make them masters of the thoughts expressed in their lessons. It becomes more real, more purposeful, in proportion as this is realized.

In this connection, it may be said that anything which adds purpose to the reading lesson gives motive to study. When pupils are asked to read to the class some selection unknown to the other pupils, they study and read with a zest quite unlike that manifested in the repetition of a worn-out selection which the others already know. For some good end, recognized by himself as worthy, the child reads now. The introduction of opportunities for individual reading, as early as may be, thus proves an incentive to study and a means of rapid advancement. Cuttings from papers and magazines and collections of children’s books prove most helpful at this stage, affording a prize for attainment, as well as an evident test of progress.

The foregoing has been written with special reference to beginners in reading. As pupils advance in their grades, the study of the reading becomes even more necessary and may be made the more profitable.

All that has been said of younger readers applies equally to older pupils. The test of the ability to study is the power to judge rightly where the limit of one’s knowledge appears.

As soon as the pupil can point out the obstacle which hinders his understanding, he is ready to be taught. A single word, a question, a suggestion from the teacher, removes his difficulty. He recognizes his need and desires help,—therefore listens attentively and intelligently.

At this stage he is enabled, also, to help himself, since he is prepared to use the dictionary and other reference books.

Older students should read with the help of the dictionary. They should, of course, be taught how to use it, just as they are taught to interpret any other book. Its use is discussed at length in another chapter.