CHAPTER VII
Method in Primary Reading
The problem of primary reading is one of the most complex and difficult in the whole range of school instruction. A large proportion of the finest skill and sympathy of teachers has been expended in efforts to find the appropriate and natural method of teaching children to read. All sorts of methods and devices have been employed, from the most formal and mechanical to the most spirited and realistic.
The first requisite to good reading is something worth reading, something valuable and interesting to the children, and adapted to their minds. We must take it for granted in this discussion that the best literature and the best stories have been selected, and what the teacher has to do is, first, to appreciate these masterpieces for herself, and second, to bring the children in the reading lessons to appreciate and enjoy them. In the primary grades we are not so richly supplied with available materials from good literature as in intermediate and grammar grades. This is due not to difficulty in thought, but to the unfamiliar written and printed forms. The great problem in primary reading is to master these strange forms as quickly as possible, and find entrance to the story-land of books. For several years, however, primary teachers have been selecting and adapting the best stories, and some of the leading publishers have brought out in choice school-book form books which are well adapted to the reading of primary grades.
We should like to assume one other advantage. If the children have been treated orally to "Robinson Crusoe" in the second grade, they will appreciate and read the story much better in the third grade. If some of Grimm's stories are told in first grade, they can be read with ease in the second grade. The teacher's oral presentation of the stories is the right way to bring them close to the life and interest of children. In the first grade, as shown in the chapter on oral lessons, it is the only way, because the children cannot yet read. But even if they could read, the oral treatment is much better. The oral presentation is more lively, natural, and realistic. The teacher can adapt the story and the language to the immediate needs of the class as no author can. She can question, or suggest lines of thought, or call up ideas from the children's experience. The oral manner is the true way to let the children delve into the rich culture-content of stories and to awaken a taste for their beauty and truth. We could well wish that before children read mythical stories in fourth grade, they had been stirred up to enjoy them by oral narration and discussion in the preceding year. In the same way, if the reading bears on interesting science topics previously studied, it will be a distinct advantage to the reading lesson. Children like to read about things that have previously excited their interest, whether in story or science. The difficulties of formal reading will also be partly overcome by familiarity with the harder names and words. Our conclusion is that reading lessons, alone, cannot provide all the conditions favorable to good reading. Some of these can be well supplied by other studies or by preliminary lessons which pave the way for the reading proper. This matter has been so fully discussed in the earlier chapters on oral work that it requires no further treatment here.
FOLK-LORE STORIES AS READING EXERCISES FOR FIRST GRADE
Let it be supposed that a class of first-grade children has learned to tell a certain story orally. It has interested them and stirred up their thought.
Let them next learn to read the same story in a very simple form. This will lead to a series of elementary reading lessons in connection with the story, and the aim should be strictly that of mastering the early difficulties of reading. The teacher recalls the story, and asks for a statement from its beginning. If the sentence furnished by the child is simple and suitable, the teacher writes it on the blackboard in plain large script. Each child reads it through and points out the words. Let there be a lively drill upon the sentence till the picture of each word becomes clear and distinct. During the first lesson, two or three short sentences can be handled with success. As new words are learned, they should be mixed up on the board with those learned before, and a quick and varied drill on the words in sentences or in columns be employed to establish the forms in memory.[8] Speed, variety in device, and watchfulness to keep all busy and attentive are necessary to secure good results.
After a few lessons one or two of the simpler words may be taken for phonetic analysis. The simple sounds are associated with the letters that represent them. These familiar letters are later met and identified in new words, and, as soon as a number of sounds with their symbols have been learned, new words can be constructed and pronounced from these known elements.