Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

OCTOBER!

CTOBER! With its bright blue skies, its hazy fall atmosphere, its frosty nights, its autumn leaves, its migrating birds-here again! And let us all rejoice, for it is a month full of possibilities for the teacher and the children. Those sultry, depressing days are past and in their place comes the life-giving, oxygen-laden air we breathe and that means more out-ofdoors life for all in order that strength may be gathered for the long winter's work. And, then, how old nature offers her

attractions to teacher and pupil and invites them to come into the field, the pasture, and the wood to see the transformations taking place. "Tis the seed time for many wild flowers; it is the dying time of the leaves of the hard-wood trees; it is the farewell song of many birds. In fact, while nature seems to be struggling to live awhile and we sympathize with her in that hopeless battle, yet we are glad to know that such must be; that in order to appreciate the more the new life of spring, we must suffer the darkness and death of the winter.

This is a grand month for schoolroom decorations made from wreaths of autumn leaves of so many different trees. Whole branches may be brought in from the woods and placed over the clock, in the corners, and along the top moulding of the blackboard. The pumpkin, the gourd, ears of corn, and other fruits of the summer vegetation afford interesting schoolroom decorations as well as valuable objects for inside nature study.

Hallowe'en this year falls on Sunday so the Jack-o-lantern feature may be omitted, but perhaps some reference to it with the reading of Ichabod Crane's famous ride, and other ghost stories will not be out of place for the last hour Friday, Oct. 29.

Mrs. Bradford supplements her work in the Manual on the subject of Reading by suggesting in this number some remedies for poor readers, emphasizing especially the need of good models and reading out loud at home. But read every word she says and profit by it. Another important discussion this month is by Miss Dora Thompson of the Langlade county training school on "schoolroom wastes." She certainly offers to the teacher many valuable suggestons on how not to waste time and energy in the teaching work. Follow her advice carefully every day and you will do much for yourself, for the school, and for the community. Miss McCormick comes again with her always practical "stunts" for primary teachers.

By the way, rural teachers, did you notice that district school program prepared by Prin. Thomson and his fellow teachers of the Richland county training school, which was published last month in this department? Nay, did you not only "notice" it, but didn't you also study it? And have you shaped your program accordingly? No problem is more difficult for the rural teacher to solve than that of teaching eight grades in a dozen subjects and arranging recitation and study periods so that it may be successfully accomplished. Consult this program and it will help you.

If you started school in September, this month will find you nearly under a full head of steam and plowing along at an amazing rate. The machinery is well oiled now; you know the children's names; they know you. Now for business, and may good old October bring to you and your "family" of bright boys and girls that spirit of good cheer, and helpfulness, and co-operation, and earnestness-and a thousand other virtues that are today making our country's boys and girls into great American citizens?

SUGGESTED REMEDIES FOR OUR POOR ORAL READING.

MARY D. BRADFORD.

"Why is it the schools do not turn out any more good readers?" This was the somewhat startling question suddenly thrown at me by my table neighbor, to whom I had just been introduced. I expressed a doubt of the fact; but she insisted that her complaint was well-grounded. "High school graduates," said she, "come to the college where I teach, not only unable to read so that people care to listen, but so badly that people cannot understand them."

I endeavored to defend the high school graduate of today by asking this teacher if she really knew how those of former times read, and so had a basis for comparison. Was not the remembered standard what she herself was able to do, rather than what the average pupil could do? She, when a child, had probably heard good reading in her own home, and had read much aloud; but might not the college teacher then, dealing with pupils from varied environments, have made the same arraignment as she was making today?

She was sure that conditions were worse. Her classes were made up of girls from widely different communities of our state and from different states. "A good reader among them is rare; they not only fail in ordinary interpretation, but blunder in pronounciation of common words," was the final charge.

I did not tell her that this was not the first time I had heard the same criticism. It was the head of the history department of a Normal School who said to me some years ago: "The worse fault the students have is that they can't read;" and soon after the man teaching arithmetic complained, "The fundamental trouble in my work is that the students can't read." These men meant in ability to see thought relations, to picture clearly what was involved in objective description. Now comes the complaint of weakness in the mechanical as well as the mental side of the art, from one whose work enables her to test and judge.

The college woman's criticism was identically the same as that heard frequently from high school teachers concerning the product of the grammar grades. Whether the trouble is attributable to some vital defect in our school training, or grows out of mistaken judgment on the part of the high

er schools in regard to what promoted pupils should be able to do, is not the question here. Our business as grade or high school teachers is to do all we can to help pupils to as high a degree of power as is possible, in the practice of this art, next to conversation, the most social of all the arts that of pleasing, forceful oral reading. And the purpose of this article is to offer some suggestions that may be helpful toward that end. The Committee of Ten pointed out years ago the two dominant agents in the formation of right habits in English speech. Good models, and practice, under never-failing watch and criticism. The same are required for the training of good oral readers.

Good Models Necessary.

First, a few thoughts about good models. Children who from infancy have heard good reading in the home, are well on the way to making good readers before they go to school. The ideal is there, and the school has nothing to do for them but to help them in their mastery of the wordrecognition process. They make the best readers. in intermediate and grammar grades, and are usually shown off on "occasions." Such children are not a proof of the efficiency of the school. (The practice referred to is, however, quite as honest as that followed by those who set up art exhibits in which they use chiefly the product of the hand of two or three especially gifted pupils.) The efficiency of any school in its reading work should be judged by the quality of the reading of those children whose home environment has furnished them no models or only poor ones; where the school must counteract the influence of wrong models, and set up better ones, as well as give the practice needed to move toward the ideal.

The good model to imitate, the good model to establish ideals-this is the first potent agent in the making of a good oral reader. I wonder if ministers realize their influence in this respect, upon the children who Sunday after Sunday may listen to their reading of Scripture or sermon. All teachers should be constantly thoughtful of the importance of imitation,-one of education's wonderful words; and, realizing this, resolve that their pupils shall hear a little good reading every day.

Leaving out of account the supreme ambition to be somebody, what better ambition could any teach

er have than to be a good reader? It is found possible for those who have littlte native ability in drawing, to attain by study and persistent practice, sufficient skill to do the work demanded by the school course. They will never, probably, gain note as artists, but they are able to set a fair model of what children are to do, and to guide practice. So it is in oral reading. In reading, it is not elocutionary effect we want, but simple, true, forceful interpretation, without strain or affectation. Dean Southwick used to say that too much stress in the reader means distress in the listeners. Children as well as adults feel the distress; the former, not being able to analyze their impression usually think it the time to laugh, and giggle at the high points, while the latter groan inwardly. Simple, natural interpretation of great literature is what every child should hear every day. Some beautiful verse or poem read in the morning by the teacher and reread until its beauty of form, clothing beauty of thought, has sunk into the pupils' minds. When a poem is approached in the reading book, the teacher should manage in the study-reading to let the pupils hear it. The same should be done with the longer masterpieces, the reading by the teacher, accompanying the first discussion and elaboration, thus providing for good first impressions. Later, after the literary unit has been seen as a whole, after the more careful study has revealed its fuller meaning, after hearing in both these steps the teacher's rendering of parts or of all, then the aim may be set up before the pupil of attempting himself to read it, so that others will enjoy listening. I have mentioned poetry in particular, because it is more important in this kind of literature that the form heard should be as good as possible. Prose is not meant to be excluded from the same method of treatment.

Teachers should avail themselves of all opportunities to let their pupils hear people read, who can do it well.

This age is doing more than any preceding one to place before all, poor and rich alike, unschooled as well as cultured, high ideals of art in several of its forms. The photograph and other reproductive processes, have brought copies of the masterpieces of painting to the walls of schoolroom and home, so that the child of lowliest circumstances may come to recognize and name at sight the great

works of the masters, and through such familiarity come into his inheritance of this great product of the mind of the race.-The barefoot boy who is throwing his evening paper at the door of the houses along the street, comes along whistling strains from some great opera, and I recognize the effect of contact somewhere with some sort of mechanical music player, which has repeated in his hearing its classic composition until some of its phases are his. In countless homes today the reproduced voice of Bryan is setting up for boys a model of oratory; and Melba is giving girls an ideal of vocal power and skill in song. The student of French and German sits in his room with no living teacher near and studies niceties of pronounciation from the "canned lessons" opened up by the cylinders of his little machine-professor.

Perhaps the time is coming when one of our school appliances will be the photographic records, not of great scenes in tragedy, by some noted master of histrionic art,-these we have now; but the fine, artistic rendering of the common gems of our school readers: as when Miss Beecher has read for preservation and multiplied mechanical reproduction her interpretation of "Cleon and I;" or Mr. Powers, has given "The Last Leaf," or Mr. Pyre "The Old Clock On The Stairs.” Then thousands of listening children,-as today they are catching rag-time and dialect song in the fivecent theaters, may hear in schoolrooms a perfect model of oral reading-and come to understand all that the word "reading" means.

Practice Makes Perfect.

Now, to consider the second agent already mentioned,-practice. Large classes and a fuller, more complex program have shortened the time for practice in school; this, combined with the fact that modern conditions of family life, are crowding out the home-reading hour, may be bringing about the state of things deplored by the college teachers. Another cause of less practice is the passing away of the old school reader, as the one and only source of reading matter. The pieces were read and reread. It is practice that brings perfection now as then; but now the thought getting work, in a larger field of literature, cuts out the time for practice in oral reading. Children can never become adept in an art which they can practice only a minute or two a day. We want to

keep our courses in literature for grade children, and we want to make our children good oral readers-and the two seem to be counteracting conditions.

Here is a place where intelligent co-operation of home and school would be most valuable. Have pupils take their readers home, and let the homes know why this is done. It is not to bother the parents with the getting of lessons, but to enlist their help in providing an audience, interested and sympathetic, to whom the child may read what he has already studied;-read and reread for practice the familiar things, till fluency and ease have been attained. This can be done, and done with profit to the child, even in homes where the parents as listeners are helping more than they would as exemplars.

It has been found that children, when the home is at all sympathetic, like to show the parents the practices of the school. Last year, a little first grade child took home her reader to show her mother how well she was getting on. Her mother asked her why she stopped so long after each sentence, when the reply came, "Why, I have to get the thought before I try to read it to you." At another time a mother of a fourth grade child, a woman of foreign birth, told in somewhat broken English the result of her boy's practice at home. The boy had shown her two ways of giving the sentence. In one, as I judged from the mother's illustration, he had pronounced the words mechanically, in a somewhat high key (the home-fixed ideal, frequently); and then gave it in conversational tones, telling her that the teacher did not want him to read the first way, but to read as he would tell it.

But even if some of the school-fixed habits of expression suffer some deterioration under home practice, there is a beneficial result to animation and fluency; and if the school can not afford opportunities for each child to practice, and the interest of parents can be enlisted, I know of nothing better to be done than is here suggested.

The practice of having what may be called optional reading has been used at different times and in different schools with beneficial effect upon the oral reading. Once a week each pupil, or as many as time allowed for, presented something to

the class of his own selection, under certain regulations as to length. In some instances several grouped together and read a dialog. A noticeable improvement in the oral reading was at once apparent. Each child practiced before he came to class, for he had a motive for practice-the natural motive for good oral reading always, that of desiring to give to others what the printed words have made him think and feel. The selection was his own, one he liked and understood, and he mastered it, and felt a pride in reading it. I have observed a significant thing in connection with this work. When I placed a lot of school readers at the disposition of the class, they generally chose their selections from one a grade or two below that of the regular reader in use, a fact that seems to indicate that if you want children to enjoy reading keep it near to the level of their powers, and not so difficult that progress is slow.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
« ÎnapoiContinuă »