Reading: How to Teach It

by Sarah Louise Arnold

How should cows be cared for? What kind of stall, what kind of bed, what food, water, pasture, should they have? Describe a pasture that you would like if you were a cow. Describe a barn that you would like if you were a cow.

How ought we to treat animals? Is it right to forget their wants when we have the care of them?

Every lesson upon animals should help the children to realize more fully their obligation to properly care for them. Sympathy for animal life ought to be developed through the reading and language lessons. Interest in animal life is always present in children. The questions above suggested cannot be answered at once, by any ordinary class of children. Many who are familiar with cows in general will be unable to answer them definitely. But the questions will lead them to more thoughtful observation, after which they can report in another lesson. Sometimes the subjects may be distributed, different groups of children being held responsible for the answer to a certain question.

2. Direct outside observation, in order to get new knowledge.

It is entirely feasible, in many school-rooms, to make the study of the cow the subject of a field lesson. The children may be taken, in groups, to a farmyard, a pasture, or a stable, where a cow may be observed and studied. Such lessons have ceased to be formidable, since they have become so common. The need of these visits is revealed by the children’s vague answers. Nothing but definite observation of the real thing will open their eyes, and make the words in their lesson full of meaning.

There are many city children who have never seen a cow. If it is impossible to take them to a real cow, excellent pictures should be substituted. Many of the questions suggested could be answered by pictures. It must be remembered, however, that the picture tells to us, who have had the real experience, much more than it tells to a child who has never had that experience. It is not strange that a boy who has never seen a real cow should imagine that animal to be six inches long, the size of the cow which he has known from pictures in the lesson. Emphasize the fact of the size. Allude to the picture as a picture only. Have the children show by their hands how high a cow would be, how long, how wide its head, etc. By such means, help to vivify the mental picture which is suggested to the children by the lesson. If the pictures are the only avenue through which they learn about the cow, do not attempt to give as much information as would naturally be associated with the real observation lesson, Remember that the amount of knowledge which the child gains is not proportioned to the number of facts which the teacher enumerates. He will intelligently appropriate those which his observation and thought have helped him to understand. As has been said before, this truth determines the value of the reading lesson to the child, and necessitates the associated lessons, which supplement his experience and enable him to bring to the lesson a mind furnished with appropriate ideas.

3. Tell the children simple facts which they cannot find out for themselves.

There are many facts associated with the cow which the children can know only through others: the use of the horns, of the bones, the hair, etc.; the manufactures; the reason for the cud-chewing; the making of butter and cheese. The writer has known class-rooms in which milk was skimmed, the cream churned into butter, and the butter eaten by the children. The quantity, of course, was small, but the process was very real and very interesting. This happened recently in a kindergarten in a large city. There were only three children in the class who had ever seen a cow. It is hardly necessary to say that the lesson followed a visit to the cow.