| I see a blue bird. | ||
| The blue bird can sing and hop. |
Call upon different children to express the thought, and accept any condensation of language which shows this power. The purpose in asking the child to interpret the whole story in his own language is to show that he has the thought.
The children are now ready to analyze the story into sentences. A good device is to cover the story with a curtain provided for the purpose. Raise the curtain and ask the children to observe, let us say, the third sentence. Cover this and ask a child to give the exact language.
Ex.:
The blue bird can sing.
If he cannot do so, raise the curtain again and let him observe. Continue in this way with the other sentences, showing them to the children in an irregular order. The purpose of this is to show that the children not only have the thought as a whole, but that they know the words in each sentence.
By this method children are trained to read groups of words at a glance. They observe the sentence as a whole, image it as a whole, and read it as a whole. Comprehension of the thought leads to freedom of expression. In consequence, pupils will not be heard pronouncing disconnected words in unnatural, artificial tones.
The development of the lesson is as follows:
First: Children observe and express.
Second: The teacher writes this expression on the blackboard. When a story of three or four sentences is complete the order of interpretation is as follows: