12. In the use of the symbols and language forms of reading, the children should be led on to freedom and self-activity. How to get the mastery of these forms in the early reading work is discussed in the "Special Method in Primary Reading and Story."
In the fourth and fifth years of school, children should learn to use the dictionary. It is a great means of self-help when they have learned to interpret the dictionary easily. But special lessons are necessary to teach children: first, how to find words in the dictionary; second, how to interpret the diacritical markings so as to get a correct pronunciation; and third, how to discriminate among definitions. Adults and even teachers are often deficient in these particulars, and children will not form habits of using the dictionary with quick and easy confidence without continuous, attentive care on the teacher's part. The best outcome of such training is the conscious power of the child to help himself, and there is nothing in school work more deserving of encouragement.
The system of diacritical markings used in the dictionary should be put on the blackboard, varied illustrations of the markings given, and the application of these markings to new words in the dictionary discovered. Lack of success in this work is chiefly due to a failure to pursue this plan steadily till ease and mastery are gained and habits formed.
In the later grades these habits of self-help should be kept up and extended further to the study of synonyms, root words and their kindred, homonyms, prefixes and suffixes, and the derived meanings of words.
CHAPTER V
METHOD FURTHER DISCUSSED AND ILLUSTRATED.
SUMMARY
In the following chapter some phases of method not fully treated before will be discussed and illustrated.
1. The proposal to treat literary masterpieces as units of thought implies a searching study and sifting out of the essential idea in each poem or selection. In some, both of the longer and shorter pieces, it is not difficult to detect the motive. In Bryant's "Ode to a Waterfowl," it is even suggested as a sort of moral at the close. Likewise in the "Pied Piper of Hamelin," and in Burns's "Tam O'Shanter." In "Glaucis and Philemon," as well as in "The Golden Touch," even a child can quickly discern the controlling idea of the myth. But in many of our choicest literary products it requires deliberate thought to discover the poet's deeper meaning, especially that idea which binds all the parts together and gives unity to the whole. In Lowell's address "To the Dandelion," we may find in each stanza the gleam of the golden thread which unifies the whole. The first lines suggest it:—