SUMMARY

1. Let children read under the impulse of strong and interesting thought.

(a) The previous oral treatment of the stories now used as reading lessons will help this thought impulse.

(b) An aim concretely stated, and touching an interesting thought in the lesson, will give impetus to the work.

(d) Clear mental pictures of people, actions, places, etc., conduce to vigor of thought. To this end the teacher should use good pictures, make sketches, and give descriptions or explanations. Children should also be allowed to sketch freely at the board.

2. Children should be encouraged constantly to help themselves in interpreting new words and sentences in reading.

(a) By looking through the new sentence and making it out, if possible, for themselves before any one reads it aloud.

(b) By analyzing a new word into its sounds, and then combining them to get its pronunciation.

(d) By using the new powers of the letters as fast as they are learned in interpreting new words.

(e) By trying the different sounds of a letter to a new word to see which seems to fit best.

(f) By recognizing familiar words in new sentences with a different context.

(g) See that every child reads the sentences in the new lesson for himself.

3. There should be a gradual introduction to the elementary sounds (powers of the letters).

The first words analyzed should be simple and phonetic in spelling, as dog, hen, cat, etc.

New sounds of letters are taught as the children need them in studying out new words.

Very little attention needs to be given to learning the names of the letters.

There need be little use of diacritical markings in early reading.

4. Many of the new words will occur in connection with the picture at the head of the lesson. Place these on the board as they come up.

If the teacher will weave these words into her conversation, they will give the children little future trouble.

5. All the different phases of the phonic, word, and sentence method should be woven together by a skilful teacher.

6. The close attention of all the members of the class, so that each reads through the whole lesson, should be an ever-present aim of the teacher.

7. Children should be trained to grasp several words at a glance:—

(a) By quick writing and erasure of words and sentences at the board.

(b) By exposing for an instant sentences covered by a screen.

(d) By questions for group thought.

These tests should increase in difficulty with growing skill.

8. Spend but little time in the oral reproduction of stories. Practice in good reading and interpretation is the main thing.

9. Children, from the first, should be encouraged to articulate distinctly in oral reading. Let the teacher begin at home.

10. Let the teacher cultivate a pleasing tone of voice, not loud or harsh. This will help the children to the same.

11. Vigorous and forcible expression is secured:—

(a) By having interesting stories.

(b) By apt questions to bring out the emphatic thought.

(d) By occasional examples of lively reading by the teacher.

(e) By definiteness in questioning.

CHAPTER VIII

List of Books for Primary Grades

In selecting reading books for primary grades the purpose is to find those which will give the readiest mastery of the printed forms of speech.

For this purpose books need to be well graded and interesting. Primary teachers have expended their utmost skill upon such simple, attractive, and interesting books for children. Pictorial illustration has added to the clearness and beauty of the books, so that, with the rivalry of many large publishing houses, we now have a great variety of good primary books to select from.

The earliest and simplest of these are the primers, which, followed by the first readers, give the most necessary drills upon the forms of easy words and sentences. Great care has been taken to give an easy regular grading so as to let a child help himself as much as possible. But as soon as children, by blackboard exercises and by means of primers, have gained a mastery of the simpler words and the powers of the letters, the Mother Goose rhymes, the fables and fairy tales (already familiar to the children in oral work) are introduced into their reading books in the simplest possible forms.

The use of interesting rhymes and stories in this early reading is the only means of giving it a lively content and of thus securing interest and concentration of thought. Good primary teachers have been able in this way to relieve the reading lessons of their tedium, and, what is equally good, have strengthened the interest of the children in the best literature of childhood.

Besides the choicest fables and fairy tales, many of the simpler nature myths and even such longer poems and stories as "Hiawatha," "Robinson Crusoe," and "Ulysses" have been used with happy results as reading books in the first three years. There are also certain collections of children's poems, such as Stevenson's "Child's Garden of Verses," Field's "Love-songs of Childhood," Sherman's "Little Folk Lyrics," "Old Ballads in Prose," "The Listening Child," and others, which may suggest the beauty and variety of choice literary materials which are now easily within the reach of teachers and children in primary schools.

There is no longer any doubt that little folk in primary classes may reap the full benefit of a close acquaintance with these favorite songs, stories, and poems, and that in the highest educative sense the effect is admirable.

In the following list the books for each grade are arranged into three groups:—

First. A series of choicest books and those extensively used and well adapted for the grade as regular reading exercises.

Second. A supplementary list of similar quality and excellence, but somewhat more difficult.

They may, in some cases, serve as substitutes for those given in the first group.

Third. A collection of books for teachers, partly similar in character to those mentioned in the two previous groups and partly of a much wider, professional range in literature, history, and nature. Some books of child-study, psychology, and pedagogy are also included. The problems of the primary teacher are no longer limited to the small drills and exercises in spelling and reading, but comprehend many of the most interesting and far-reaching questions of education. It is well, therefore, for the primary teacher to become acquainted not only with the great works of literature but with the best professional books in education.