Reading : a manual for teachers

Preface

So rapid has been the progress in Psychology in the last years, so earnest and all-sided the study of teaching problems, so suggestive the work of Child Study, that much new light has been thrown on the method of presenting the various studies in the school curriculum. Added to this there has been an increased desire on the part of teachers themselves to escape from the deadening effects of mere routine work and to become intelligent students of the problems that confront them in their class-rooms. The language of Psychology is no longer strange to such teachers, since it has penetrated much of the best pedagogical literature ; the idea of simple, everyday observation in their own classroom laboratories has grown familiar.

Under these circumstances there is a demand for a more serious and thorough discussion of popular educational questions. Teachers no longer desire to be merely told how to teach a subject, but they choose rather that sound principles of procedure be developed which shall suggest varied and extended application

which they are themselves quite able to make.

iii

IV PREFACE.

The reading problem is an unusually complex one. Students of Psychology know that it is by no means solved. But so much new light has been thrown on this most obscure subject that dull and difficult ways in Reading have become illumined.

This book aims to bring together, in a concise form, some of the most valuable and suggestive contributions of later educational thought to the teaching of Reading. It discusses the Psychology underlying the Reading process, and illustrates the discussions with examples drawn from practical teaching work. The Appendix has been prepared with the object of affording material for the use of teachers' classes.

The book is written for pupil teachers, whether they be in city training schools, normal schools, or in their own school-rooms, where they are, perhaps, trying to solve the problems of education single-handed.

Table Of Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Learning to Speak 1

II. Relation of Form and Content .... 4

Chapter I. Leakning To Speak

What is involved in learning to read ?

Perhaps we can understand better how to answer this very complex question if we ask ourselves what processes are involved in learning to speak.

When children come to our primary schools they command a spoken language. If you attempt to trace the process by which they have gained a command of this spoken language, you find it something like this : —

As babies they have heard spoken words ; i.e. certain auditory sensations were obtained from spoken words, over which the active child-mind busied itself so that perceptions of spoken words were gained. These were auditory perceptions.

Did you ever watch a mother with her child ? First, words and songs are simplified, then they are crooned, and sung, and whispered to the child again and again, and always with animation and pleasure. Each little word and sentence is brimful of talk that says what can be said only to a little child, and none of us have studied life far enough to think with any clearness what it means to him.

If the mother show a ball or flower or doll to her child, the name is uttered while the object is being displayed. In this way the auditory perception of the word comes just when the child-mind is busied over the visual image of the object. Now the child is forming perceptions of these objects, and by and by the perceptions of the spoken words are associated with the objects that they represent.

This association of the word and the idea is the beginning of learning to understand, of learning to speak, of learning to read. This association of the word with the object or idea which it names, the simple beginnings of which we have traced, goes on continuously in the child's life, and teachers take up a little later what the mother has begun.

Now a new stage of development is reached in the child's life ; the word recalls the idea, and the object or idea, the word. When the child begins to speak, his words stand for ideas. When he comes to the first primary room, he speaks intelligently, because his vocabulary represents his store of concepts, and he speaks for the purpose of saying something.

He already possesses an oral language sufficient for his present needs. He comes to the school to be taught a written language, and the primary teacher who would help him to this written language in the reading lesson must follow nature's method if she would be a successful teacher. She must grow into an intelligent sympathy with the child that will enable her to establish something like real intercourse with him. The written word must come with a real message for his mind and heart. It must have repetitions endless, but with

LEARNING TO SPEAK. 3

infinite variety ; it must be full of interest for him ; hence it must always be associated with the concept, i.e. it must from the beginning be a means of expression. Let us recapitulate here. The' child's spoken language is gained : —

(1) By forming concepts of objects.

(2) By forming auditory images of words.

(3) By associating the concept with its appropriate

word.

Mastery of this spoken language is attained by constant repetition under the stimulus of interest. The written language must be obtained —

(1) By forming visual perceptions of words.

(2) By associating the written word and the idea.

This written language can be mastered only by faithful repetitions under the stimulus of interest.

Chapter II. Relation Of Form And Content

The mother gives to the child those objects that will appeal to him. She learns by observation the things over which he will most readily busy himself. She assists him to those activities which will arouse and develop his physical and psychical nature. She stimulates these activities by her own sympathetic interest. The child pursues with great persistence and pleasure those things which give an opportunity for free self-expression. The spontaneous attention which he gives under these conditions of free- activity is the condition under which his clearest ideas are formed. Healthful response, in the form of activity, both receptive and expressive, is what the mother has secured. She has awakened his interest in the objects and activities toward which his own development inclines him. Without such interest his attention would be fitful and evanescent.

The presentation of subjects to which our children will respond and their presentation in the most fortunate way form two most important aspects of lesson work. For this self-active response is interest, the condition of spontaneous attention, without which education is a sorry matter for both teacher and child.

The perceptive activity of the child does not lend itself readily to the form of either spoken or written

RELATION OF FORM AND CONTENT. 5

language. If the child listens with attention, the spoken words must say something to him ; if he looks attentively, the written words must recall ideas that are interesting to him. His interest centres in the content. He masters the language forms because of their essential relation to content. Interest in content, when it is fairly sustained, is the efficient means in the mastery of language forms.

The first condition of teaching anything well is the securing of sustained interest with the accompanying habits of attention. The vocabulary of words that the child must master before he can read are forms. They must then be associated with a content that will interest the child.

The observation of children shows that they are interested in humanity and in nature, especially in those aspects of nature that appeal to them as life. The human interest develops first and is most constant and persistent. Child study thus far suggests that children are most interested in children. The child's home is his little world, the only world he has ever explored. From his home his interest leads him out to the world of living animals and plants and the larger world of living, acting men.

He must enter these worlds as a child, — observe them with a child's eyes, respond to them in a child's way. It is noteworthy that the books which have appealed most strongly to children are books that have children in them. This is partly due, no doubt, to the child's interest in the child and partly to the fact that a book which has a child for its centre is more likely to carry with it settings that will interest the child. They are books that give the child's point of view — Miss Andrew's book "The Seven Little Sisters," and Kipling's " Tomai of the Elephants " and " Mowgli " stories are excellent illustrations of this. Let us repeat : —

(1) Clear perceptions are gained under a condition

of concentration.

(2) Concentration in its best form cannot be secured

without the aid of interest.

(3) Children's vital interest centres in content, never

in the form of words.

(4) Children are most interested —

a. In humanity and its activities, especially in

children.

b. In nature, especially whatever in nature

exhibits life and movement.

Chapter III. Material For Early Reading Lessons

Material for early reading lessons may then be drawn from these two great sources — the humanity source and the nature source. If we can add the human interest to the nature interest, or vice versa, so much the better. We find such a relation in literature and in life. The average child cannot study geography under a teacher who knows and loves his subject, without learning to appreciate in some measure the intimate relation between man and his environment ; he will learn how surely man has grown strong in overcoming the difficulties of his environment. (See Quiquern in Kipling's Second. Jungle Book.) He cannot study history intelligently without learning how the story of whole peoples has been modified by their physical surroundings. All his science study will teach him the dependence of man on nature for supplies, as nature depends on him in turn for " dressing and keeping " ; it will lead him later to an appreciation of the important fact that some of humanity's greatest strides in civilization have resulted primarily from harnessing some great natural force. He cannot go far in literature without finding evidences of the poet's love for nature — a love which in many respects is strikingly akin to the child's.

The strong ethical influence of nature study enters into the work from two sides — first, from a realization of the laws of life as they are exhibited in nature, or from the receptive side, and second from getting into a right relation with plants and animals, or from the active side. The child who studies the plants in such wise as to come into a vivid realization of the close interdependence of part on part, so that the whole appears to him as it really is, a system of intimately related parts, with each part contributing to all the rest of the plant and receiving something in return from the rest — this child has not only a more scientific conception of plant life, but he has a valuable type illustration which will help him to understand more complex organic relations as he finds them, whether exhibited in plant or animal form, in a continental structure or a social organization. The child who is taught to feel that the animal which has been removed from its environment for study must be honestly cared for, and its needs faithfully attended to, is not only acquiring a habit that will be likely to lead to more painstaking observation, but he is learning a rational and honorable guardianship of life, which is one of the important attributes of moral character. The child should destroy the fewest possible seedlings in studying them ; he should plant no seed without being taught to care for it. For nowhere do we touch life without incurring responsibility. To learn this would be invaluable to any child. Nature study should teach it.

In choosing material for nature work we must be guided by three principles : —

(1) The fundamental life relation which unites humanity to nature must be exhibited.

MATERIAL FOR EARLY READING LESSONS. 9

(2) Material must be chosen from grade to grade

that will give an orderly sequence which will serve as a foundation for future science study.

(3) The work must be adapted to the experiences

of the class itself.

The first condition has already been alluded to from the standpoint of interest. From the standpoint of a correct education it is all-important that the child should reach a true conception of fundamental life conditions.

True ideas of nature naturally lead to right action toward objects of nature. In one of the large cities of the northwest the boys were wont to disturb the birds' nests and stone their occupants. In vain did the teachers remonstrate. A study of birds was begun a little later, and Longfellow's " Birds of Killingworth " was read. From that time the war against the birds ceased, without a word or suggestion from the teachers.

Another condition which must govern the choice of material in all nature work is its adaptability to the particular needs of the children themselves. Young children should be given material that impresses them as having life. Growth and movement are the two attributes that appeal most strongly to children. From the plant world choose living, growing plants, and have the children care for them. From the animal world select animals that come close to their lives. Again, let types be chosen ; e.g. if, in a series of lessons where material is taken from the garden, a monocotyledonous plant is chosen for study in one grade, let a dicotyledonous plant follow. In material drawn from the zoological field, if the grasshopper is studied in one grade, choose another type insect for subsequent study. In this way the child is laying an orderly foundation on which subsequent work can build.

The very first lessons in reading may well be drawn from nature study, since these lessons lend themselves more readily to the child's limited vocabulary of written words, and give better opportunity for the foundation of clear sense images.

As soon as possible material drawn from literature should be introduced. Stories from Folk-Lore, Fairy Tales, Rhymes, and Legends that have become children's classics should find their place in the reading hour. The range of this material widens so rapidly that, like Philip Gilbert Hamerton's good reader, the secret of successful choice is in knowing how to skip judiciously.

The bridge to this class of material is most naturally made from the nature side, where a yearly sequence is followed, through the interest that develops in special holidays, or in poems relating to those objects in nature that form the subjects of study ; or the transition may begin through the study of Indians or Esquimaux, or in some other way. In the choice of material follow the child's growing interest. In this way a true literary taste is developed more surely, and the difficulties of mastering a written language more readily overcome.

The child's environment must always modify the matter of his early reading lessons. The child in one of our larger cities or towns, who has had a limited experience with nature, should have many lessons drawn from the social world in which he lives. Meanwhile

MATERIAL FOR EARLY READING LESSONS. 11

no effort should be spared to let nature into the schoolroom. The street-car driver, the drayman, the milkman, the stone-cutter, the mason, and builder — all the activities and industries about the child should be utilized as material for the reading lesson. This industrial side, with its life and movement, will interest the children. Back of the industrial side the child should be helped to a growing understanding of social life. He should think of these laborers, not only in their service to society in general, but in their service to their own homes in particular.

No better starting-point could be made in the early language lessons than the industries of the children's own parents. Such work has the advantage of a vital relation to the child's own life, and presents valuable points of departure leading to wider fields in history and literature, in science and geography. When nature work is introduced after such a beginning, it should be approached from the social side. The homes of animals, their manner of obtaining food, their care of their young, etc., should be presented in such a way that the child's own social experiences will help him in their interpretation. But some real experience with plants and animals must precede any nature study whatever, and, as has been suggested, such experience should teach the children the care and protection of living things. 1

1 The writer once saw a most valuable and suggestive exercise in the Practice School at Jena. The teacher of the beginning class, instead of starting at once with the full programme of work, reserved periods in the first days for ascertaining the experiences of the class, and the variety and accuracy of their ideas of everyday objects.

All this suggests that the teacher should study the environment of her class, and that the results of such study should modify the early lessons in reading. Special care should be exercised that these early lessons show definite plan and continuity. The first primers and readers should be chosen with an idea of carrying forward these living beginnings.

To recapitulate : —

(1) Material for reading should be chosen from

literature and nature study.

(2) Nature and humanity are closely related. Ap-

preciation of this relation contributes directly to interest, intelligence, and character.

(3) Material chosen must be adapted to the child's

stage of development.

(4) Types should be chosen.

(5) Procedure should develop an orderly sequence

from grade to grade.

The results showed that the children, although they represented the same social class and lived in the same neighborhood, varied widely in their sense knowledge. Apparently these differences arose from the habits of their respective families. The children who had shared the walks and excursions of their parents had an intelligent understanding of the world about them, and an accuracy of sense images not frequently shown by those children who had explored the region in a more accidental and haphazard way.

It was noticeable that these children exhibited the liveliest interest in each other's experiences, and a natural and spontaneous interchange of thought grew apace. When the work was completed the teacher had formed a clear impression of the amount, variety, and accuracy of the sense images of his class, and the class themselves had come to feel at home in their new environment, and to know each other. A social life was established.

MATERIAL FOR EARLY READING LESSONS. 13

(6) Literary material should be taken from chil-

dren's classics.

(7) The earliest lessons should be modified by the

child's environment.

(8) Teachers should, at the beginning of the work,

acquaint themselves with the children's stock of sense experiences.

CHAPTER IV. TREATMENT OF MATERIAL (Science)

The reading lesson should be closely related to the nature lesson which it should supplement rather than reproduce. Points of interest developed in nature study should be followed out in the reading hour. When this is not done, the children should have opportunity in the reading lesson itself for the observation of objects about which they are to read. Such observation is not reading, but it should provide the children with clear sense images, without which reading in the true sense is impossible.

In the first grade early lessons should be written on the board in the presence of the class, the children and teacher making their own lessons. Such work should be continued in diminishing amount through the primary grades. This method closely unites practice in writing and spelling with reading.

If we ask what gives power and grasp in reading, we shall find that it comes from : —

Power to concentrate.

Power to understand the content.

Power to make the content real and vivid. Power to grasp thought in its entirety. Power to subordinate in relation to the central thought, that is, to get true proportion. 14

TREATMENT OF MATERIAL. 15

Power to read is indeed the first great condition in education and the primary end of early teaching.

We must remember, with Froebel, that all great things have very simple beginnings, and that these beginnings largely determine the final outcome. If, then, this power and grasp in reading is to be present in our high schools, it must find a beginning in the lowest primary class.

The board lesson is one of the surest means of making that fortunate beginning which will lead directly to a cultivation of the power that reading should develop. The reasons for this lie in the following facts : —

The board lesson represents a thoroughly mastered content, so that words are taught in relation to ideas.

The board lesson gives opportunity for the best possible concentration of attention, hence for the more thorough and rapid mastery of language forms.

The board lesson affords a natural transition to the printed slips that may also represent the work of teacher and class. Such a transition tends to make the child appreciate book-making. It makes the book a natural and familiar thing, and prepares him to use it with more interest and understanding.

We have suggested that material drawn from the natural science field should be treated so as to give the beginning of a scientific training. This requires that children be led to exercise their perceptive activities over material, make thoughtful inferences, reason from cause to effect, and vice versa, and base all conclusions on known facts. It requires, too, that children express all observations and conclusions in simple, direct, truthful language.

These requirements in method suggest the following order of work with material : —

(1) Careful perceptive activity over that which is

(2) Careful interpretation of that which is observed.

(3) Natural and accurate expression.

The teacher, whose class is studying the young bean plant, should see that children observe accurately the size of the cotyledons at various stages. By means of comparison they reach the fact that the cotyledons are diminishing, shrinking up. Meanwhile, there is a related set of facts which they are observing. The young plant is growing larger while the cotyledons are growing smaller. They must look for the cause of this. With a few young bean plants developed in moist cotton, they will discover that the baby plant is using up material encased in the cotyledons, which are the bean plant's little storehouses.

Always see that the child makes his own observations and, as far as possible, his own inferences, guarding carefully against the pernicious habit of guessing.

It is a mistake to think that all material must be brought into the schoolroom, though much of it should be brought there. When the children are studying the rabbit it will greatly enhance the value of the work if the animal can live in the schoolroom a few days, becoming an object of regulated and natural care as well as an object of observation. Fishes, polywogs, crayfish, etc., may be kept as long as is consistent with their

TREATMENT OF MATERIAL. 17

welfare, and should then faithfully be returned to their native haunts. In no other way can children make observations so accurately, and acquire so sure an interest in the habits and movements of the animal, and with the work their own respectful consideration for all life will constantly grow.

It is a mistake, however, to confine all work to description.. Field lessons should begin at once. Material for subsequent lessons should be gathered during excursions, and will naturally grow out of the points of greatest interest ; a e.g. the children who have observed their first dandelion with the teacher, and have left it to gladden other eyes, may still use this as material. The teacher helping the children to recall the chief points of interest and to give expression to them in the form of a reading lesson, secures something like the following : —

Our First Dandelion.

To-day we found our first dandelion.

It was growing close to the sidewalk.

There was green grass all around.

It was in a sunny place.

We think that the dandelion loves the sunshine.

We did not pick the dandelion.

Many people will see it.

It will say to them, " Spring is here ! "

X A kindergartner recently related this little incident. "Miss R. was walking with a little group of children when they discovered their first dandelion. The first impulse was to pick it, hut some one suggested that if it were left there, other people could see it. At that they all gathered round and worshipped it." This little incident right out of everyday child life suggests that "having" even in nature study, is not always best possession.

Much of the success of the work will depend on the teacher's skill in directing the activity of the children both in seeing and saying. She will help the children to discover in their field walks the conditions under which the flower is growing, its habits will be observed while she will be careful to awaken no mere sentiment for the flower, but simply enter into the child's natural feelings for it. The teacher must direct the natural expression of the class, in the subsequent reading and language lesson by questions and suggestions ; e.g., Where did we find the dandelion growing ? (writing the children's answers on the board in u the story" which they are making together). Why did we think the dandelion liked this place ? Why did we decide to leave it ? What will it say to people ? etc.

Remember that definiteness must characterize all work in directing the child's thoughts. He will lose all interest in seeing if he is left in doubt as to the direction that his activity is to take.

It should be remembered here that much of the reading work drawn from nature study has failed because the reading lesson has been made a means of merely repeating the nature lesson, or of pronouncing the written language lesson drawn from the nature work. The reading lesson should as a rule, hold something new for the child. The truths learned in the nature study may, and must, reappear in the subsequent reading lesson, but they should be seen from a new angle. If a child already knows the exact content of his reading exercise, there is no opportunity left for self-activity over that content, hence interest diminishes and a habit of mere word pronunciation is induced.

TREATMENT OF MATERIAL. 19

The reading lesson should be made a means of adding the element of imagery and life that should always follow accurate perceptive activity. Personification is a natural method of expressing such imagery. Also in such lessons the human interest may be appealed to, and the true relation between child and nature taught. Admirable review lessons can also be given that quicken the child's knowledge and increase the accuracy of his ideas. (See Appendix I., especially the work in review, p. 135.) In such a procedure, reading becomes truly supplementary of nature work.

Because of the character of the child's imagination, personification becomes the child's natural form of ex pression. Children readily fall into this method of making their stories. The slightest initiative will induce this form of expression, e.g., What would the dandelion say to us if it could talk ? Let us ask it where it lives. From this most animated form of language, good reading most naturally grows. Its very animation stimulates thought, makes expression natural, and awakens a more lively appreciation of content.

I am a dandelion.

My home is in the green grass.

I like sunny places best.

I look like a star in the grass.

I am sun color.

I say to the people, " Spring has come ! "

To summarize : —

(1) Material for first reading lessons should be drawn

from nature study.

(2) These first lessons should be written on the board.

(3) The reading lesson should be preceded by a na-

ture lesson in the schoolroom or a field lesson.

(4) In these nature lessons the children should be

trained to make their own observations.

(5) These observations expressed in simple natural

language should make the reading lesson.

(6) These subsequent reading lessons should sup-

plement the nature study, but they should never be a mere repetition of it.

(7) In all this work, children should be clearly and

simply directed.

CHAPTER V. ANALYSIS OF LESSONS (Science)

Interest in the object itself must develop before there can be great interest in reading about the object. As we have seen, the science lesson proper should not be the reading lesson, but the reading lesson should grow out of it. Science primers should in every case succeed the study of the objects which they describe ; only so is an intelligent interest possible. Let us look at the first two or three lessons in such a primer and ask ourselves about the work that should have preceded them.

I am a little baby bean.

I am white.

I am round and smooth.

Little Nell put me to bed in the earth. I like the soft warm earth.

It is my blanket.

My blanket covers me all up.

The sun loves me.

He makes my bed warm.

The rain loves me.

It gives me water to drink.

I love the good rain.

Little Nell loves me.

She will let no one hurt me. 21

I love little Nell.

I shall go to sleep now.

Soon the sun and the rain will wake me.

Do you know what I shall do then ?

(For remaining lessons of series, see Appendix I.) It is evident, first of all, that the study of the bean plant, from seed to seed, should precede the reading of this book. Next, there should be a series of board lessons in reading growing out of such study, so that children will master a fair vocabulary of words along this line. They are then ready to enjoy the book.