Special Method in Primary Reading and Oral Work with Stories

by Charles A. McMurry

In discussing the literary materials used in the first four grades, we suggest the following grading of certain large groups of literary matter, and the relation of oral work to the reading in each subsequent grade is clearly marked.

	Oral Work.	Reading.
1st Grade.	Games, Mother Goose.	Lessons based on Games, etc.
	Fables, Fairy Tales.	Board Exercises.
	Nature Myths, Child Poems.	Primers, First Readers.
		Simple Myths, Stories, etc.
2d Grade.	Robinson Crusoe.	Fables, Fairy Tales.
	Hiawatha.	Myths and Poems.
	Seven Little Sisters.	Second Readers.
		Hiawatha Primer.
3d Grade.	Greek and Norse Myths.	Robinson Crusoe.
	Ballads and Legendary Stories.	Andersen's & Grimm's Tales.
	Ulysses, Jason, Siegfried.	Child's Garden of Verses.
	Old Testament Stories.	Third Readers.
4th Grade.	American Pioneer History Stories.	Greek and Norse Myths.
	Early Biographical Stories of Europe, as Alfred, Solon, Arminius, etc.	Historical Ballads.
		Ulysses, Arabian Nights.
		Hiawatha, Wonder Book.

This close dependence of reading proper, in earlier years, upon the oral treatment of stories as a preliminary, is based fundamentally upon the idea that suitable and interesting thought matter is the true basis of progress in reading, and that the strengthening of the taste for good books is a much greater thing than the mere acquisition of the art of reading. The motive with which children read or try to learn to read is, after all, of the greatest consequence.

The old notion that children must first learn to read and then find, through the mastery of this art, the entrance to literature is exactly reversed. First awaken a desire for things worth reading, and then incorporate these and similar stories into the regular reading exercises as far as possible.

In accordance with this plan, children, by the time they are nine or ten years old, will become heartily acquainted with three or four of the great classes of literature, the fables, fairy tales, myths, and such world stories as Crusoe, Aladdin, Hiawatha, and Ulysses. Moreover, the oral treatment will bring these persons and actions closer to their thought and experience than the later reading alone could do. In fact, if children have reached their tenth year without enjoying those great forms of literature that are appropriate to childhood, there is small prospect that they will ever acquire a taste for them. They have passed beyond the age where a liking for such literature is most easily and naturally cultivated. They move on to other things. They have passed through one great stage of education and have emerged with a meagre and barren outfit.

The importance of oral work as a lively means of entrance to studies is seen also in other branches besides literature.

In geography and history the first year or two of introductory study is planned for the best schools in the form of oral narrative and discussion. Home geography in the third or fourth year, and history stories in the fourth and fifth years of school, are best presented without a text book by the teacher. Although the children have already overcome, to some extent, the difficulty of reading, so great is the power of oral presentation and discussion to vivify and realize geographical and historical scenes that the book is discarded at first for the oral treatment.

In natural science also, from the first year on the teacher must employ an oral method of treatment. The use of books is not only impossible, but even after the children have learned to read, it would defeat the main purpose of instruction to make books the chief means of study. The ability to observe and discern things, to use their own senses in discriminating and comparing objects, in experiments and investigations, is the fundamental purpose.

In language lessons, again, it is much better to use a book only as a guide and to handle the lessons orally, collecting examples and stories from other studies as the basis for language discussions.

It is apparent from this brief survey that an oral method is appropriate to the early treatment of all the common school studies, that it gives greater vivacity, intensity, simplicity, and clearness to all such introductory studies.