Words at the Head of the Lesson.
It is not uncommon to find the lists of words which precede or follow the lessons of the so-called “regular reader” used as the only basis of the study of the lesson. This would be wise if the lists enumerated the only or the chief obstacles to the children’s understanding of the lesson. But as a matter of fact, they must vary greatly in value, sometimes bearing no relation to the real needs of the individual class. They are prepared with the average child in mind, but as some one has humorously said, “The average child does not exist.” They may prove very helpful to one class, and of no possible use to another.
Examine any such list with reference to your own class, or ask the children to study the list with you. You find that the first word is an old friend, the second is made up of two known words, the third is unfamiliar in both meaning and form, the fourth presents a variation from the ordinary rule of spelling, the fifth and the sixth are easy to master or are already well known.
After such a survey, the thoughtful pupil will “study” the third and fourth critically and carefully, the others having been disposed of in the first reading. Such an exercise is profitable, deserving the name of study. The routine direction, “Study the words at the head of the lesson twenty times, and copy them five times,” leads to careless droning over the page and ends in preventing any intelligent study.
Reading “Without the Book.”
A visitor in a primary school was astonished by the rapid and fluent reading of a five-year-old who delivered “The Story of a Dog” with remarkable ease and precision. “May I see your book?” the visitor asked. The little lad passed the book to her with smiling consent. “But,” she exclaimed, “there is nothing here that you have read.” “Dear me!” cried the child, looking at the picture, “I got the wrong dog.”
The writer remembers a child who explained with charming naïveté, “I can read my reader all through without the book.” Upon being tested, he proved his statement.
The constant repetition of the pages of the “regular reader” soon imparts this fatal facility, which often completely deceives the teacher. The ability to repeat the story, word for word, does not necessarily involve the power to recognize the words on any page. The children simply memorize the sentences to which they have so often listened, and are reciting by rote, not reading.
Just here the new lesson written upon the board, or the supplementary reading book, is effective. The new arrangement of familiar words demands thoughtful attention, and serves therefore as a test of skill. The teacher should guard against the common tendency to use a single lesson until it becomes useless.