Children vary much in their power to learn and apply phonic facts. With some, slowness to perceive these facts is due to lack of ear discrimination. With some, lack of power to apply the facts is due to lack of reasoning power. The child who writes, “I like the fresh ear,” and justifies her spelling by the analogies bear, tear, wear, hence, ear, has too much reasoning power for the language she inherits.
It is expected that most teachers will teach this book by the “story” method, supplemented by the “word and sentence” method, with recourse, where needful, to the “phonic” method. The various combinations of any or all of these methods, and the various devices employed will depend upon the training, the experience, and the pedagogic faith of each teacher. The book can be thus taught throughout without the use of phonics.
It is expected that the wise teacher will watch her class, and present to the whole class, to the class by groups, or to individual children, the phonic facts, when she thinks they can be best assimilated. The teacher who presents them to all her children just as and when they occur in the book, will do much less harm than in handling any of the purely phonic readers, since the phonics are so easily graded, so successfully divorced from any injurious modification of the sense of the text, and so skillfully associated with melody and rhythm that they will never, as presented, produce the baleful effect of correlating the sight and sound and motor centers, with the intellect left out, under the name of reading.
The sounds of the single consonants, of the digraphs, ch, sh, th, wh, wr, and kn, that are treated as single letters, and the short sounds of the vowels are learned first as the initial letters of certain words that are well known as wholes. For instance, run has already become thoroughly known as a word when the child finds it at the bottom of [page 3] printed thus:
| Run R | run r |
It will be seen from this that the word run is not to be analyzed at this stage into the two parts r and un. Only the sound of the letter r is to be taught. This is done by having the sound of r associated with the letter. The printed symbol (given here in its two forms, the capital and the small letter) is to be known to the child as representative of the sound of the letter, not of the name of the letter. It requires but little effort to teach the child how to sound an initial letter. The teacher may request him to “start to say” some familiar word, as run, but to utter only the first sound of the word. To facilitate the process, she may do this herself and afterward have the child do it. When he has learned to give the sound of r, she shows him the letter, which from this time is known by its sound. In this way the sound of each letter may be taught. The names of the letters will be learned later in the year.
The next step toward making the child self-helpful is developed in the primer by means of phonic jingles such as will be found on [page 51]. The rime is to be read aloud by the teacher and repeated or sung by the children. Many teachers will prefer to write the rime on the blackboard. The simple, artistic melody given with each rime helps the child to memorize it. The appropriate story which precedes the rime and upon which it is based, together with the picture that illustrates it, invests the rime with interest for the children.
As will be seen, these phonic jingles contain words that are alike in symbol as well as in sound. It is confusing to the child at this early stage of the work to have before his eyes different symbols for the same sound, as is the case, for instance, when he has high and sky to rime with I, or see and me to rime with sea. His riming words at this time should aid the eye as well as the ear. For this reason the phonic jingles have been given.
The words of the jingle that are arranged in a column at the right of the page, are easily separated into two parts, showing that they all belong to the same “phonic family,” thus, c-at, m-at, etc. Such separation of words into parts is not shown in the primer for the reason that it is not considered best to present to the child’s eye, at this early period, printed words that are disfigured in any way. His first book should show the words as wholes. This fact, however, need not prevent the teacher from using the phonic jingles for word analysis. The words in the column having been shown as wholes to the child, he sees that they not only rime to his ear but resemble each other to the eye. Moreover, the words in the column look exactly like the same words when he finds them in the sentences he reads. Before he reaches the phonic jingle on any given page, the child has learned to know by sight and sound the consonants that are the initial letters of the words he is to sound in the jingle. For instance, he has learned to know and to sound the consonants c, m, b, th, r, p, f, and s before the phonic jingle on [page 51] is given to him. It is then an easy matter to lead up to a simple analysis of the words. The rime has been read by the teacher and repeated or sung by the child; the words in the body of the rime, which are repeated in the column at the right of the page, have been seen by the child in both places. He may now be taught to cover the unlike parts (the initial consonants) of the words in the column and show the like parts (the phonogram that indicates the “family” to which each of the words belongs). He may then cover the like parts, showing, in turn, the unlike parts.
| Unlike Parts | Like Parts |
| c- | at |
| m- | at |
| b- | at |
| th- | at |