A brief course in the teaching process

by George D. Strayer

The questions of management considered above cover much of the ground usually considered under the head of school discipline. The same problems, especially from the standpoint of punishments and rewards, are considered in the chapter which deals with the moral training of children. It may be well to add here that the problem of discipline is largely one of good teaching. Children who are hard at work seldom worry the teacher. Right conditions for work may play an important part. The consideration of some of the problems of organization is, therefore, in place in a chapter on management.

The ordering of the daily program is one of the most important elements in classroom management. The desire for variety is strong in children, and their power to concentrate their attention upon a single kind of work is correspondingly short. In the primary grades periods of from eight to twelve minutes, with a possible extension to fifteen, will give sufficient opportunity for change of work. These periods may be lengthened to thirty or even forty minutes in the upper grades. The length of the period will depend upon the variety which may be found in the work of a single period. In a reading lesson which includes word drill, reading, and oral composition, the maximum period may be used, while a period devoted to number drill may be worse than useless after the first five or six minutes. It is undoubtedly better for children to work to the maximum of their capacity for short periods than to dawdle for twice the time. In the upper grades twenty minutes may be as long as children can work on the development of a difficult problem in geography, while they may be active and willing to continue work in a literature lesson after thirty-five or forty minutes. The writer has seen a class of seventh-grade children who worked consistently for forty-five minutes on a history problem which involved discussion, map work, and the consulting of reference works.

Group instruction has long been recognized by teachers of large classes as essential to the best work. In a class of forty or fifty children, however carefully they may have been graded at the beginning of the year, there will appear differences in attainment which make it necessary to divide the class into two or more groups in some subjects, in order to work to best advantage. In the lower grades, especially in the first, where grading is least able to place children on the basis of their ability, there is the greatest demand for group work. As many as three or four classes in reading may be necessary in the first grade. It must be remembered that such grouping should never be made to apply to all subjects, nor is it necessary to apply the group plan to any subject without variation. Children divided into three groups for reading may do very well in two for arithmetic, and may all work together in nature study or constructive work. In reading it will be worth while to have all work together at times on work which is possible for the least capable and which may serve as a review for the more advanced group.

By the time the fourth or fifth grade is reached, the pupils will be somewhat more evenly graded. It will still be necessary, however, to group pupils in those subjects in which the sequence is such that the pupils’ advance depends upon the complete mastery of the part of the subject already covered. In arithmetic, in the more formal part of the work in English composition, and sometimes in geography or history, two groups are advantageous.

When pupils all work together it is not expected that all will be able to do an equal amount of work. It is especially important that provision be made for the brighter members of the class, in order that they may have enough work to keep them active and alert. It too often happens that in large classes the work is scaled down to meet the ability of the poorest half of the class, in consequence of which the brighter pupils learn to loaf and tend to lose interest in school work. However many groups the class may be divided into, there will always be the necessity for individualizing the children of each section. The brighter ones must be given assignments which are beyond the ability of the less capable, while a minimum of achievement must be accepted when it represents the best effort and means the continued development of the pupil who is weaker intellectually.

Good teachers provide for individual needs, not only by grouping their classes on the basis of their ability, but also by giving individual instruction. No daily program should fail to provide a period during which the teacher can devote herself to the needs of those individuals who need special help. It may be to help the boy or girl who has been absent on account of sickness, to explain a difficult problem in arithmetic, to help in the interpretation of a map or diagram, or to teach the pupil how to study; always there will be plenty for the teacher to do who thinks of her pupils as individuals during the half hour or more devoted to individual instruction.

The idea of providing individual instruction may be made the central idea in organizing the daily program, as is done in the Batavia system,[24] which allows one half of all school time for individual instruction. There would seem to be little need for devoting so much time to individual instruction in a school having any adequate system of grading and promotion. Indeed, as has already been pointed out in the discussion of social phases of the recitation, there is a positive advantage in teaching in groups. The extravagant claims sometimes made for particular systems of organization, especially when it is declared possible by means of the system for all children to reach the same standard of excellence, bear on their face the evidence of their fallacy.

Any attempt to give group or individual instruction must be accompanied by provision for seat work for those who are not working with the teacher. In the lower grades much has been accomplished by allowing children to express themselves with colored crayons and paints, with scissors and paste, as well as with the more common pencil and paper for copying, or the letters and words for word and sentence building. There is probably as much worth in the seat work which results in the expression of the ideas gained from a story by means of crayons or with scissors as there is in the conversation concerning the story in class. As children advance, more difficult problems in constructive work and in study may be assigned.

In the intermediate and upper grades the problem of having children occupied who are not directly under the supervision of the teacher is largely the problem of teaching these children to study. A child in the fourth grade ought to be able to discover and note carefully the difficulties which the lesson assigned presents, and he should, in some measure at least, be able to satisfy the problems which arise. In succeeding grades, if children are being taught to study, they ought in increasing measure to be able to gather data, organize it, and proceed to the solution of their own problems.[25]