AN UNFINISHED STORY
Oral Exercise. 1. You and a classmate may now play that you are the two boys in the first picture. Make believe that you are just arriving at the lake on your bicycles. Jump off and lean them against trees.[56] Talk about the lake and the beautiful day. Look the boat over and talk about your plan to go rowing. Talk about where to leave the bicycles. Decide to have the dog watch them. Explain this to the dog. Tell him you are sorry that he cannot go along. Then untie the boat, jump in, and push off. One of you is rowing. The other is sitting on the back seat and talking to the dog.
2. Two other pupils, and two others, may now play the same happenings.[57] They should try to talk exactly as they would if they were really the boys in the picture. Those two boys probably talked all the time.
Group Exercise. The class will tell what it likes in each playing of the picture, and what it thinks could be done better. The following questions will be useful in these talks:
1. Did the boys jump off their make-believe bicycles as if these were real? Did they lean them carefully against trees?
2. Did they talk together as if they were really on a day's picnic?
3. Did they get into the boat carefully? Did one of them row the make-believe boat as if it were a real boat? Did he look back now and then to see where he was going?
4. Which two boys played the picture best? Which two talked the best?
II
In the second picture the boys are seen on the water, well out from shore. They have just made an unpleasant discovery.