The meaning of experiments such as have been described is not far to seek. The ingenious supervisor or teacher who has watched the ordinary recitation made up of a series of questions and answers recognizes the fact that such a recitation is very formal. His efforts to improve teaching will carry him into new types of class exercises. The laboratory type of exercise will serve better in certain cases; in others, the supervised-study type. Sometimes it is desirable to try other experiments. Without attempting to deal with these other experiments in detail, it may be well to enumerate some of the types of class exercise which have not been discussed in full.
The lecture method is common in higher institutions. In the primary grades this method has taken the form of story-telling and has been developed of late with elaborate technique.
The study lesson is a name which has been used to describe an exercise in which the pupils study new material on which they have not prepared in advance. The special forms of this kind of exercise may vary from a critical reading together of an advanced section of the textbook to a series of readings by members of the class of various scattered sources in collateral books.
A report lesson is a modification of the lecture method. The members of the class, rather than the teacher, furnish the lecture material; each student having prepared a part of the whole in advance has an opportunity to present his findings to the class, with the result that the subject is studied in full through the coöperative efforts of all.
The laboratory method may take on the form of field excursions in the geographical sciences and the form of gardening in agriculture. Whatever its form it is one of the most radical departures from the traditional class exercise.
Shopwork has become common in many lines. With the girls the class exercises in domestic science and domestic art are crosses between construction exercises and investigation exercises.
Drill exercises in mathematics and language consist in the performance under the teacher’s supervision of a series of tasks which are designed to cultivate fixed habits in the fields to which they belong. Very often such exercises are conducted in such a way that each pupil works individually.
Written examinations ought to be included here. Whenever a class is given a series of review questions for the purpose of requiring a general review of a whole subject, the result of the exercise is to fix in the student’s mind certain larger elements of the study and to establish certain broad habits of selection. Written examinations may be, from this point of view, devices of training, not merely tests of results. The examination method as a training method has, accordingly, an important place.
The coöperative recitation is one in which the pupils ask the questions. The teacher withdraws as far as possible, and allows the members of the class to initiate the discussions. When this kind of exercise is first introduced, the pupils are likely to follow as closely as they can the manner of questioning which they have seen exhibited by their teachers. If the experiment is carried out persistently, the pupils will ultimately become quite independent and spontaneous in their questioning.