Oral Exercise. 1. Play that you are one of the boys in the boat and have suddenly discovered your dog in the water near by. Look as you think this boy looked. Say what you think he said to the dog. Say what he said to the boy rowing the boat.
2. Now, with a classmate, play this part of the story. Begin where you stopped in the first picture. You have left the dog on shore and are rowing out into the middle of the lake. What can you see out there? What do you say to each other? Think of the things that two boys out in a boat would talk about,—birds flying by, fish, the sky, the depth of the water, whether they could swim ashore. Say these things. Then, right in the middle of your good time, the dog! After you have scolded him, you and your classmate talk together about what to do. What does each say, and what do you decide?
Group Exercise. Other pupils will now play this part of the story in their own way. Each two will try to show the others the best way. After each playing, the class will talk about it. These questions will help the class to see whether the playing was good or not:
1. Did the players talk enough? What more could each one have said?
2. Did they act and move as if they were sitting in a boat out on a lake or as if they were standing on dry land?
3. Did they lean over the edge of the boat and look for fish? Did they speak about how the shore looked from the middle of the lake? Did they see other boats on the water?
Oral Exercise. How did the story end? Did the boys row on and let the dog swim after them until he got tired and returned to shore? Or did they take the wet animal into the boat and leave the bicycles to take care of themselves? What happened then? Were the bicycles still there when the boys returned from their boat ride? Tell your classmates how you think the story ended. If the ending is a good one, the teacher may ask you and other pupils to play it.
Group Exercise. The teacher will write some of the story endings on the board. Perhaps one or two pupils who have told good endings may write these on the board. Then the class will try to make each one better.[58] The following questions will help in this class work:
1. Does every sentence begin with a capital letter?
2. Does every sentence end with the right kind of mark?
3. Are there mistakes in any sentence?
4. Where can better words be used than those of the writer?
5. Where can a sentence or two be added to make the story better?
Written Exercise. Of all the story endings that have been corrected and rewritten on the board, the best one should now be copied. As you copy, notice the spelling of the hard words, the capitals, and the punctuation marks. Then, together with two or three classmates, correct your work and theirs.