How to Teach Reading in the Public Schools

by S. H. Clark

Choose selections from all sources—from the history lesson, and from the geography lesson. Let these selections be fairly simple, and above all, vital and interesting. Barbara Frietchie, Longfellow’s Peace-Pipe from Hiawatha, and Browning’s Ride from Ghent to Aix, or The Pied Piper, and even shorter extracts of prose or poetry, are excellent material. Give out a dozen of these, let each pupil learn one by heart, and tell it,—not declaim it,—to his classmates.

Let the teacher not worry because this process is slow and threatens to leave the work outlined for a given term incomplete. It is not the quantity but the quality we are after. But by this method we shall in time cover more ground than we now do in a given period. If we continually offer such criticism as will impress the pupil that thought-getting is everything, that reading is but the expression of that thought, he will go to his history, and geography, and arithmetic lesson for thought; so that the time spent in the reading hour is virtually just the training for every other lesson. Finally, this is the true preparation for the making of sight-readers. It is true, one should be able to read better after some preparation than he does at sight; but everyone should be able, by the time he leaves the public school, to read any ordinary passage at sight without blundering. The mental attitude formed by the method urged will cause the student to approach the printed page warily, prepared to deal with its difficulties, and will thus produce better reading.

A word to those who ride the sight-reading hobby too hard. It is only the experienced reader who can read well at sight. To ask an immature pupil to read at sight is to do one of two things: if he is timid, it frightens him; if he is a poor reader it simply fastens the careless habits upon him, by leading him to believe, by implication, that reading is merely pronunciation. In the upper grades, there should be sight-reading, but only where the previous training has been methodical. It is well to give the class a chance to read over the selection for a few minutes before the test is made.

Each teacher must decide for himself how he will develop the foregoing principles. The following plan, however, representing the actual work of a teacher before his class, will be suggestive:

We are going to study how to read; and the first thing we must know is, What is reading?

Now, before we answer this question, let us try to get an answer to another: What is speaking? Speaking is telling someone what I am thinking or feeling. So, if you were in the author’s school, he could tell you the thoughts he has. But you are not, and so he must write them. Now we are ready to answer the question, What is reading? Reading is getting thought from the printed or written page.

Let us go a little further. Suppose a writer wants to say something to you through the printed page, what does he do? He first thinks over very carefully what he has to say, and then chooses and writes the words that will give you his meaning. But remember, you must study his words and think about them as carefully as he did when he wrote them.

Have you been attentive so far? Let us see. Can you tell me what speaking is? what reading is? If you can not, do you not see you have not been paying attention?

Getting thought from the printed page should be just like listening carefully to speaking. Yes, you must be more careful in reading, because the author is not here to explain things to you, or to repeat his words. You have only the printed words, and if you do not listen very carefully to what they say, you will not understand him. Now let us see whether this is clear. Here is a sentence; can you see what I see? “The next day, which was Saturday, the king called his generals and some of his friends to the royal tent, and told them, in a quiet voice, that at daybreak on Tuesday he was going to return to London and give up the war.”