SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS

1. Know your lesson-both its literary possibilities and its technical difficulties.

2. Know your class-both as children whose lives are to be affected for good by the inspiration they are to receive through this lesson with you, and as readers with varying powers to interpret the printed page. The reading lesson should be a social exercise. Children who are ready for The Sixth Reader have acquired much power in independent study, and they should come to the recitation prepared to contribute individually and abundantly to the pleasure of the whole class. Such a result is possible when the teacher throws upon each member of the class all the responsibility he can carry.

Children are able and are delighted to do far more than is usually permitted. Let them, as far as possible, plan the lesson, ask the questions, make the criticisms. Insist upon large, suggestive, helpful criticism. You are working for power, not information. Do not become discouraged if the children's questions are not so good as yours the first week or the second; and above all, do not think you are wasting time. Train the children to ask keen questions, to pass by the nine unimportant ones and to ask the tenth pertinent one. In less time than you realize the pupils will be demanding of one another clarity of thought and good expression beyond anything that you could get. The cause is the child's self-activity.

It would seem, therefore, that the teacher should become a trainer of teachers of reading. To do this she herself must be able to read, to sense the lesson in all its literary values, and to get corresponding responses from her class. Five books especially helpful in such work are, Hinsdale's Teaching of the Language Arts and Art of Study; Chubb's The Teaching of English; Baker, Carpenter and Scott's The Teaching of English, and Carson's The Voice and Spiritual Education.

Reading lessons fall into two types, extensive and intensive-sight reading and study reading. The division is based on the difficulty of the text, not on any inherent difference in the nature of the selections. A lesson that would be extensive reading for The Sixth Reader pupil would, in all probability, be iņtensive reading for The Fifth Reader one. The child should have both kinds of work, for through one he acquires facility in expression, and through the other power to get deeper thought.

Little need be said on extensive reading. It should be pure pleasure. The teacher may seat herself among the children, who, with books closed, listen to several read in turn from Rip Van Winkle, or who dramatize a selection.

Intensive reading is the test of the teacher. There is no limit to the artistic skill she may put forth. A few general principles may be in place. The selection should be presented as a whole to the class before they begin to analyze it. This can be done by assigning it to be read during several study periods and reproduced orally in outline. Following this study of the whole will come the study of the larger literary units included, such as, in Enoch Arden, the childhood of Enoch, Annie and Philip; the married life of Enoch and Annie; Annie's life alone; the life of Annie and Philip; Enoch's years of waiting on the lonely island; Enoch's return home, his abnegation and death. After the study of the large units should come the close consideration of the single sentence.

In such a selection as Julius Cæsar, the pupils should be questioned not only on the allusions explained in the notes, but upon their own interpretation of such passages as the one beginning

"There is a tide in the affairs of men."

Do not spoil the child's pleasure in a selection by over-emphasizing the study of individual words. The connotation of words is a matter of gradual acquirement and children can not grasp at once all the finer shades of meaning in a masterpiece.

The child's constructive imagination should constantly be appealed to. Ask him, for instance, to give in his own words the portraits in The Deserted Village of the schoolmaster and the parson.

Great opportunity for developing the child's taste is afforded in the home reading lists. There is no substitute in this matter for personal interest on the part of the teacher. One good way to interest children in a book is to read to them a part of the story. The book can then be lent over night to some child who will tell to the class the next day what he has read. The teacher may continue for a few moments the reading of the story that the class shall again feel the author's power and style and the book then be given to another child for further report.

Clear-cut enunciation, erect bearing, the light falling properly on the book, are matters that should need no comment.