The "inference exercises" which follow each section after the first two consist of statements of well-known facts explainable in terms of some of the principles which precede them. They involve a constant review of the work which has gone before, a review which nevertheless is new work—they review the principles by giving them new applications. Furthermore, they give the pupil very definite training in explaining the common things around him.
For four years a mimeographed edition of this book has been used in the elementary department of the San Francisco State Normal School. During that time various normal students have tried it in public school classes in and around San Francisco and Oakland, and it has recently been used in Winnetka, Illinois. It has been twice revised throughout in response to needs shown by this use.
The book has proved itself adaptable to either an individual system of instruction or the usual class methods.
TO THE TEACHER
Do not test the children on the narrative description which introduces most sections, nor require them to recite on it. It is there merely to arouse their interest, and that is likely to be checked if they think it is a lesson to be learned. It is not at all necessary for them to know everything in the introductory parts of each section. If the children are interested, they will remember what is valuable to them; if they are not, do not prolong the agony. The questions which accompany and follow the experiments, the applications or required explanations at the ends of the sections, and the extensive inference exercises, form an ample test of the child's grasp of the principles under discussion.
It is not necessary to have the children write up their experiments. The experiments are a means to an end. The end is the application of the principles to everyday facts. If the children can make these applications, it does not matter how much of the actual experiments they remember.
If possible, the experiments should be done by the pupils individually or in couples, in a school laboratory. Where this cannot be done, almost all the experiments can be demonstrated from the teacher's desk if electricity, water, and gas are to be had. Alcohol lamps can be substituted for gas, but they are less satisfactory.
It is a good plan to have pupils report additional exemplifications of each principle from their home or play life, and in a quick oral review to let the rest of the class name the principles back of each example.
This course is so arranged that it can be used according to the regular class system of instruction, or according to the individual system where each child does his own work at his natural rate of progress. The children can carry on the work with almost no assistance from the teacher, if provision is made for their doing the experiments themselves and for their writing the answers to the inference exercises. When the individual system is used, the children may write the inference exercises, or they may use them as a basis for study and recite only a few to the teacher by way of test. In the elementary department of the San Francisco State Normal School, where the individual system is used, the latter method is in operation. The teacher has a card for each pupil, each card containing a mimeographed list of the principles, with a blank after each. Whenever a pupil correctly explains an example, a figure 1 is placed in the blank following that principle; when he misapplies a principle, or fails to apply it, an x is placed after it. When there are four successive 1's after any principle, the teacher no longer includes that principle in testing that child. In this way the number of inference exercises on which she hears any one individual recite is greatly reduced. This plan would probably have to be altered in order to adapt it to particular conditions.