A Course of Study for the Eight 
 Grades of the Elementary School 
 
 with 
 
 A Preliminary Discussion 
 
 of 
 
 The Problem of Elementary English 
 
 Second Edition 
 
 By 
 
 Bernard M. Sheridan, Superintendent of the Public Schools. 
 
 Lawrence. Mass. 
 
SPEAKING AND WRITING 
 ENGLISH 
 
 A Course of Stucly for the Eight 
 Grades of the Elementary School 
 
 with 
 
 A Preliminary Discussion 
 
 of 
 
 The Problem of Elementary English 
 
 Second Edition 
 
 By 
 
 Bernard M. Sheridan, Superintendent of the Public Schools, 
 Lawrence, Massachusetts 
 
S35" 
 
 Acknowledgments. 
 
 In the preparation of this course of study ideas and suggestions 
 have been borrowed from many sources, and sometimes without change 
 of language. Separate acknowledgment being out of the question, the 
 undersigned desires to express in this place his indebtedness to all who 
 have been a help to him in this way, and the hope that they in turn may 
 find in these pages some ideas of his own that are worthy of imitation. 
 
 Bernard M. Sheridan, 
 
 Superintendent of Schools. 
 June, 1915. 
 
 / 
 
 CI.A428236 
 
 MAR 24 1916 
 
 -ho- j. 
 

 PART ONE. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SPOKEN AND WRITTEN 
 ENGLISH IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. 
 
 Language is by all odds the most important subject in the 
 curriculum. It is, also, for many reasons the subject that is 
 most difficult to teach. There has been an almost entire lack 
 of standards for the teacher to go by. The language habits in 
 the home and on the street are generally not good. There is so 
 little "linguistic conscience" among grown up people that it is 
 difficult to arouse any in little children. These difficulties have 
 been enormously increased in recent years by the influx of large 
 numbers of non-English-speaking peoples, with the result that 
 in some schools of our city the teaching of English is no longer 
 the teaching of the mother tongue, but the teaching of a 
 foreign language. 
 
 The purpose of this course of study is to help the teacher 
 to meet the elementary language problem more effectively and 
 more hopefully. A few things it has aimed definitely to do: 
 (i) To replace vague, uncertain, and sometimes too 
 ambitious aims with a purpose clearly defined and reason- 
 ably possible of achievement. 
 
 (2) To prescribe limits within which the elementary 
 work in language is to be confined. 
 
 (3) To emphasize the teaching of oral language, both 
 for its own sake and for its value as a foundation and 
 preparation for written language, and to formulate a 
 
4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 systematic and progressive plan of teaching this most 
 important and much neglected side of English composition. 
 (4) To construct tentative standards of achievement 
 for each of the eight elementary grades, in both oral and 
 written language, which it seems reasonable to expect the 
 majority of pupils to reach. 
 
 The lack of a clear and definite limitation of the work to 
 be covered in language teaching in the elementary school has 
 been responsible for much of the waste which has attended the 
 teaching of the subject. Courses of study have called for more 
 than could possibly be accomplished. The requirements have 
 been too many and too vague. Many things have been taught 
 that should have been postponed to the high school, since they 
 ■do not appeal to the needs or the capacity of the stage of devel- 
 opment of the ordinary elementary school pupil. Pupils who leave 
 the elementary school before completing the course will be better 
 off for having been taught a smaller number of things thoroughly 
 and for having had abundant practice in these few fundamental 
 things. 
 
 The kind and amount of language training in the elemen- 
 tary school should be largely determined, it seems fair to say, 
 by the answers to the following questions : 
 
 1. What are the common language needs of people 
 in every day life? 
 
 2. What specific language habits can the school 
 cultivate which will most usefully meet the demands that 
 will be made upon the boy and girl at the end of their 
 elementary school course ? 
 
 3. What capacity for oral and written expression 
 is possessed, or may with reasonable effort be acquired, 
 by ordinary children in the different grades ? 
 
 In the light of such a study of children's language needs 
 and capacities, the following would seem to be a reasonable and 
 workable aim for the elementary school : 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 /. To turn out pupils able to stand before the class 
 and talk for a few minutes upon a subject within the 
 range of their knowledge or experience, speaking plainly,. 
 in clean-cut sentences, and without common grammatical 
 mistakes. 
 
 2. To turn out pupils able to write with fair facility 
 an original paragraph upon a subject within the range 
 of their experience or their interests. 
 
 Such a paragraph should show : 
 
 /. An absolute mastery of "the sentence idea". 
 
 2. Freedom from glaring grammatical mistakes. 
 
 3. Correct spelling of all ordinary words. 
 
 ./. Unfailing use of the commonest marks of punctu- 
 ation. 
 
 5. Some evidence of attention to matters of sentence 
 structure and to the choice of words. 
 
 6. Some degree of power to organize and arrange 
 ideas around a central thought. 
 
 SPOKEN ENGLISH. 
 
 It is much more important that the elementary school should 
 give pupils ability to talk well than it is that it should give them 
 ability to write well. This is simply because people talk more 
 than they write. Few people write much, but all people talk 
 a good deal. People who write for a business may write a book 
 or two in a year. Most people talk enough in a single week to 
 fill a book. Few graduates of the grammar school are ever 
 called upon in after days to submit to a test of their knowledge 
 of arithmetic or history or geography. But their spoken Eng- 
 lish is being passed upon every day of their lives, and it is 
 largely upon the basis of this test that they are adjudged to be 
 educated or uneducated men and women. Moreover, their 
 success in business and in their intercourse with other people 
 depends more than is commonly realized upon their power to 
 speak well. Yet of all the subjects in the curriculum oraL 
 
6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 language seems to be least effectively taught. Indistinct 
 utterance, poor sentence structure, grammatical mistakes, a 
 poverty of words, and a lack of anything like fluency are coo 
 common in the speech of grammar school graduates. 
 
 There are several reasons why our pupils do not learn 
 to talk well: 
 
 (i) There is not enough of oral language work, as a 
 separate and distinct training, in the elementary school. 
 
 (2) Oral work is not utilized as much as it ought to be 
 as an aid in, and a preparation for, written work. The child 
 who is to be taught to write well must first be taught to 
 talk well. 
 
 (3) The other subjects of the course are not utilized as 
 effectively as they might be to develop power in oral composition. 
 All these provide occasion for a free and natural use of 
 language on the part of the pupils, and fruitful observation of 
 their speech on the part of the teacher. 
 
 (4) The common method of the recitation furnishes little 
 motive for the pupil to talk well. Very rarely has he the 
 sense that he is addressing an audience with the purpose of 
 actually telling or saying something worth while. Most of the 
 things he recites, and some of the things he reads aloud, have 
 very little interest for him. When he recites, he recites to the 
 teacher, and much of what he says is lost to the pupils avIio sit 
 behind him. When he reads, he reads to the teacher with ihe 
 audience behind his back ; or, if he stands in front of the 
 room, he reads to an audience whose every eye is following the 
 words he is reading. Since he is conscious of no real need to 
 speak clearly and distinctly, that his fellow-pupils may hear, 
 he does not do so. 
 
 (5) The school has perpetually to fight the bad influence 
 ■of the language environment in which many pupils spend their 
 •out-of-school hours. 
 
 (6) The school makes the mistake of thinking it can 
 correct bad habits of speech by the application of the rules of 
 grammar. The ability to talk correctly comes from practice 
 and not from the study of rules. The pupil hears these in- 
 correct forms over and over again on the street. Obedient to 
 
INTRODUCTION - 
 
 the principle of motor reaction, such forms invariably "write 
 themselves out" in his daily speech. It is of little avail that 
 the pupil knows what is right. He must hear it ; say it ; 
 say it again and again and again ; say it until the motor re- 
 action is so strong that the right form stamps its impression 
 on the spinal cord and wipes out the wrong one. Only practice 
 can make perfect. 
 
 These matters receive attention, over and over again, in 
 the pages that follow. It is not thought necessary at this 
 time to do more than state them. 
 
 An effective course in oral composition should include the 
 following essential things : 
 
 (i) Much opportunity for free self expression. 
 
 (2) Constant attention to matters of voice, enuncia- 
 tion, pronunciation, and inflection. 
 
 (3) The training of children, by constant practice, 
 to compose oral paragraphs upon simple themes, and the 
 development, through these, of some elementary skill in 
 selecting, arranging and expressing their ideas. 
 
 ( 4 ) Unremitting efforts in all grades to eliminate the 
 common errors of speech. 
 
 ( 1 ) The child's free self-expression is developed best by 
 drawing upon his own personal experience. That is what the 
 youngest pupil knows best and can talk about best. Imagination 
 follows experience directly. It is a personal field, easily and 
 pleasurably worked. Reproduction has to do largely with 
 what lies outside of the personal experiences of children, to 
 things that they do not really know. Memory is the principal 
 factor in reproduction. Experience and imagination have little 
 to do with it. It is, therefore, the least profitable field for 
 children's free expression, and should be sparingly used. 
 
 (2) The "schoolroom voice" has long been a term of 
 reproach. Teachers may not be able to improve the quality of 
 
g INTRODUCTION 
 
 their pupils' voices, but they can do a great deal toward getting 
 pupils to speak in an easy and natural tone of voice, which will 
 still be audible not only to the teacher, but also to the pupils 
 in all parts of the .room. In addition, constant attention should 
 be given, day in and day out, to matters of clear articulation, 
 correct pronunication, and right inflection. By making the 
 conditions of the recitation such that the pupils get the feeling 
 that they are actually talking to one another with the intention 
 of imparting information, or opinions, and not merely "reciting" 
 to the teacher to prove they have learned their lessons, the 
 speech of children would greatly improve in these respects. But 
 no matter how favorable to good talking the schoolroom 
 conditions are made, pupils ought to have throughout the entire 
 course systematic training through special exercises. 
 
 In an appendix will be found lists of some of the most 
 common defects in the enunciation of children and some exer- 
 cises designed to remove them. The exercises printed tbere 
 are meant only to be suggestive. Teachers will doubtless be 
 able to supplement them by many others of their own. There 
 is, however, enough material in the printed drills, if they are 
 diligently used, to turn in the right direction the careless 
 tendency so manifest in the speech habits of children. 
 
 (3) Oral composition, as the term is used in this course 
 of study, means a great deal more than ordinary talking or 
 conversation, which as often as not is fragmentary and discon- 
 nected. By oral composition is meant a body of conned ed 
 speech, large enough in scope to demand attention to its 
 structure and form. All the qualities that are to be developed 
 in the written composition, may be, and ought to be, developed 
 first in the oral exercise : choice and variety of words, quality 
 and variety of sentences, and arrangement of sentences in a 
 paragraph. This development will, of course, be slow and 
 gradual. But there will be no improvement at all, unless 
 children are habituated from the first to be critical of their 
 spoken English, in so far, at least, as the more flagrant mistakes 
 in syntax are concerned, and the more fundamental matters of 
 sentence structure and use of connectives. 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 This course of study provides for much practice in com- 
 posing oral paragraphs and gives many suggestions for teaching- 
 children how to acquire the art of developing interesting oral 
 themes on subjects within the range of their interests and ex- 
 perience. Numerous examples of oral compositions, drawn 
 from the actual work of pupils, are given under every grade. 
 
 (4) (The habit of correct speech cannot be gained from a 
 study of grammar^ Good habits or bad habits of speech are 
 pretty well fixed before the child studies grammar and before 
 he could possibly derive any benefit from a study of it. Good 
 English is mastered by practice, not by rule. It is of little 
 use for the children to know principles or rules. They may 
 spend a week learning the rules for the agreement of the verb 
 with its subject, but rules will not prevent them from saying 
 "he don't". But if they are made to repeat "he doesn't", 
 "he doesn't", "he doesn't", alone or in concert, in as many 
 sentences as can be made by talking as fast as they can f or 
 five or ten minutes, the correct form will finally begin to sound 
 right. It is not knowledge, but habit that counts. 
 
 In this course of study an attempt has been made to allot 
 to each grade a number of common errors for correction. 
 Naturally such a distribution is more or less arbitrary. That 
 certain errors of speech are listed under one grade and not 
 under another does not imply a failure to realize that all of 
 the errors are committed by pupils in all the grades, or that 
 the correction of them in one grade will make it unnecessary 
 to fight against the same errors in succeeding grades. The 
 chief object of allotting the correction of certain errors to 
 certain grades and that of certain other errors to other grades 
 is to focus the attention of both teachers and pupils upon a 
 relatively few points, for which they will be held accountable. 
 
 The "language game" has been found to be one of the' 
 most effective methods for teaching right forms of speech, 
 particularly in the primary grades. By means of these the 
 child is brought frequently to use the correct forms in a natural, 
 manner and under conditions which appeal strongly to him. 
 In an appendix a number of these games will be found. 
 
I0 INTRODUCTION 
 
 prefaced by an interesting analysis of the common errors of 
 children's speech, based upon a systematic study conducted by 
 the teachers of a city school system during the whole of a 
 school year. 
 
 WRITTEN ENGLISH. 
 
 IN GENERAL. 
 
 When the pupil comes to put on paper what he has to 
 say, the situation becomes complicated by the entrance of factors 
 which were not present when he was expressing himself orally. 
 He must think about his penmanship. He must watch his 
 spelling. He must look out for his capitals, his punctuation, his 
 indentations, and all that. These things become automatic, or 
 nearly so, after years of training and practice ; so that educated 
 men and women are required to give little or no thought to 
 their penmanship, spelling, punctuation, and the other technical- 
 ities of written expression. But the child is at first obliged 
 to think of all these things all of the time. By degrees, 
 however, with reasonably good instruction and sufficient practice 
 of the right kind, the observance of the simpler requirements 
 of written technique becomes habitual to him, so that by the 
 time the pupil has completed the elementary school course, he 
 ought to be fairly free from the necessity of giving conscious 
 attention to the mechanics of written language. 
 
 Added to the mechanical difficulties of written expression, 
 there is present, also, at the moment of writing, a self- 
 consciousness which tends to check the spontaneity wrr'ch 
 characterizes his oral efforts. In the case of children this is 
 no doubt partly due to the demands made upon them by the 
 technique of written expression (penmanship, spelling, capitals, 
 punctuation, and so on) all of which, because they have not 
 yet become matters of established habit, are a constant drain 
 upon their attention, and act like brakes upon the relatively 
 free and easy delivery of their ideas which characterizes their 
 spoken language. Thought has a stronger and closer association 
 
INTRODUCTION x l 
 
 with speech than with writing, and even adults, whose penman- 
 ship and spelling and punctuation have hecome matters of 
 second nature, requiring no conscious attention during the 
 process of composition, find their expression slowing down the 
 moment they put pen to paper. Written expression is of its 
 very nature slower, more deliberate, more careful, and, there- 
 fore, more productive of self-consciousness than oral expression. 
 But with children it is probably true that the chief difficulty 
 which written language at first presents over oral language 
 is the attention which has to be given to the technicalities of 
 writing, the penmanship, the spelling, the punctuation, the use 
 of capitals, and matters pertaining to the arrangement of the 
 composition on the paper. 
 
 .Strictly speaking, penmanship and spelling are not matters 
 of language technique at all, since they are not developed 
 primarily through written language. The school program 
 provides separate drill for both. The failure to use capitals 
 correctly and the simpler marks of punctuation (the period 
 and the comma ) is accounted for not so much by the supposition 
 that these things are difficult in themselves as it is explained 
 by the lack of careful training in oral language. The child 
 who is trained from the first to speak in clear cut sentences 
 will after a while acquire such a strong sentence sense tnat 
 he will seldom, if ever, write as a sentence a group of words 
 that is not a sentence. Pupils write in the classroom as they 
 have been accustomed to talk in the classroom. Failure to use 
 capitals and periods in written composition is largely due to 
 bad oral habits. If children do not possess the sentence sense, 
 their written work is sure to contain many omissions of 
 capitals and periods, and consequently many misuses of the 
 comma. The teaching of written language, so far as correctness 
 goes, offers but few difficulties over and above those which are 
 met with in the teaching of oral language. 
 
 There is, of course, more than mechanical correctness to 
 be sought in written composition. There must, in addition, be 
 some attention paid in the upper grades to sentence structure 
 and to some of the other rudiments of style. For this purpose, 
 the careful and deliberate written exercise, giving opportunity 
 
I2 INTRODUCTION 
 
 for thought, for studied revision, and finished workmanship,. 
 is a more effective vehicle of instruction than the oral exercise, 
 which must of necessity be less thoughtful and structurally less 
 excellent. Still, the teacher should never forget that the basis 
 of all good written work is laid in good oral work, and that if 
 oral work is neglected, her efforts to produce good written 
 language will be in vain. 
 
 Written composition, then, so far as the mechanics of 
 writing are concerned, does not offer so many difficulties as 
 the teacher has been inclined to attribute to it. But the few 
 things that are required in the way of written technicalities 
 must be mastered as early as possible in the course, so that 
 these difficulties will not stand too long in the way of the 
 freedom and spontaneity of the child's expression. So long as 
 his attention is distracted from the thought of what he wants 
 to say by thinking of his penmanship, his spelling, his 
 punctuation, and similar matters of written technique, his 
 composition is likely to be formal and meagre and uninteresting. 
 On the other hand, it would be folly to attempt to cultivate 
 freedom of expression by allowing children to write regardless 
 of the rules of punctuation, spelling, arrangement, and the 
 like. These matters of written technique (and we are dealing 
 with only the simplest items of them in this course of study) 
 should not, during the process of writing, hold the center of 
 consciousness. They should occupy only the "margin" of con- 
 sciousness, as we say. But before they can be safely relegated 
 to the margin, they must first have occupied the centre of 
 consciousness for some time. Children do not possess intuitively 
 habits of correct written expression. These must be built up 
 from the day that written language is begun in the second grade. 
 The important thing, and the difficult thing, is to give sufficient 
 drill on the mechanics of written composition, without killing 
 the child's spontaneity and his freedom of expression. Drill 
 on the mechanics of written composition there must be, from 
 the very start. At the same time, the teacher must be extremely 
 cautious not to let her insistence upon correct form kill the 
 child's desire for self-expression. Form must be taught, and 
 in the process content must not be sacrificed. This is a task 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 >3 
 
 that calls for all the wisdom and all the ingenuity of the 
 teacher. It is the real test of the good teacher of composition. 
 
 ONE PARAGRAPH COMPOSITIONS. 
 
 At the outset of this discussion the statement was made 
 that the lack of a clear and definite limitation of the language 
 work in the grades below the high school has been responsible 
 for a great deal of the ineffectiveness of our teaching, and the 
 following general standard was there set up as a reasonable 
 measure of attainment in written composition for the ordinary 
 graduate of a Lawrence grammar school: 
 
 "The ability to write with fair facility an original 
 paragraph upon a subject within the range of his ex- 
 perience or his interests, using sentences grammatically 
 complete and correctly punctuated, with correct spelling. 
 
 and free from grievous grammatical mistakes." 
 
 ) 
 This standard has the merit of being tolerably definite and 
 reasonably possible of attainment. Later on in the course of 
 study, under assignment of work by grades, there will be 
 found paragraphs written by children, which have been adopted 
 as tentative standards for the different grades. 
 
 The chief reason for limiting the written exercise to a 
 single paragraph is to assure sufficient practice in writing which 
 a longer composition makes impossible, and to focus the atten- 
 tion of both pupil and teacher upon the smallest possible 
 language field. In addition to the opportunity it affords for 
 practice, the single paragraph is admirably suited to the pur- 
 poses of teaching elementary composition. It is a complete 
 unit, a whole composition in miniature. It gives free range 
 to development of sentence structure. It may illustrate all the 
 forms of discourse: narration, description, exposition, argument, 
 as the four chief kinds of writing are technically known. It is 
 subject to all the laws of discourse. By its use the child 
 gains a practical knowledge of every important feature of 
 literary workmanship. The child need not be conscious of 
 
14 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 these things. But the teacher should think of them all' 
 the time. 
 
 The children in the lower grades will not, of course, be 
 expected to produce a paragraph. In the first grade, children 
 will make a sentence or two with alphabet cards, first from 
 sentences written on the board by the teacher, and later will 
 construct one or two original sentences, based mostly on their 
 reading lessons. By the time the pupil has reached the third 
 grade he will be taught to cast his sentences into a form of a 
 paragraph. This paragraph will at first be short and simple. 
 It will grow in length and in organization of thought during 
 each succeeding year of the elementary school course. 
 
 THE MASTERY OF "THE SENTENCE IDEA." 
 
 The fundamental thing, the element upon which all other 
 details of composition depend and upon which the whole 
 superstructure of composition is built, is the mastery of the 
 sentence. Nothing, therefore, is more important in the earlier 
 grades than the development of what is variously called "the 
 sentence idea", "the sentence sense", "the sentence feeling",, 
 "the sentence instinct" — the trained habit of mind by which the 
 completed thought is recognized as complete, and left to stand 
 by itself. The lack of this fundamental "sentence sense" is the 
 most glaring fault of elementary school compositions. It is a 
 natural enough fault in very young pupils, but its persistence 
 in the higher grades, as is too often the case, seems almost 
 indefensible. 
 
 This fault appears in two forms. The first is present in 
 the composition that rambles on and on, with statement after 
 statement strung along on a series of "and's", "hut's" , and 
 "so's", often without so much as a comma to separate the 
 different statements. Very young children talk in this fashion, 
 prattling on in a breathless stream of words, seldom dropping 
 their voices until they have reached the end of what they have 
 to say. Children in school talk in much the same way. Here 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 15 
 
 are some stenographic reports of actual talk of third grade 
 pupils recently heard in our own schools : 
 
 "My mother told me to go to the store and get her a loaf of 
 bread and then I went to the store and the bread fell down and 
 got all muddy." 
 
 "The ship was very, very long and it carried coal and some- 
 times it carried pig iron and one day my papa got off the boat to 
 buy me a fish line and one day I had that fish line and I was 
 trying to fish on the river but the fish pulled so that I couldn't 
 fish any more and my mother said to stop because it was too 
 hard." 
 
 The source of this fault suggests its remedy. Children 
 must be taught through much careful oral work to break them- 
 selves of this bad habit. Most of our troubles in written 
 composition come from our neglect of oral composition. The 
 child who has been taught to speak in clean-cut sentences will 
 give the teacher little annoyance by writing the kind of sentence 
 that is here described. This has been said before, and is 
 repeated here only to remind the teacher that if this fault 
 persists in the written compositions of her pupils, it is because 
 she has failed to head off the trouble by sufficient oral practice 
 on this particular point. While the habit is being broken up, 
 the children's sentences will become short and jerky. But this 
 will do no harm. The later grades will attend to that. In any 
 case, the "choppy" sentence is preferable to the "run on' r 
 sentence. 
 
 The other form in which this lack of "sentence feeling" 
 shows itself is worse in some respects than the first, because 
 it is a more violent breach of the laws of the sentence. Here 
 is an illustration of it : 
 
 "My dog is a spaniel his name is Nep, that stands for Neptune. 
 Neptune was the sea god, we call the dog Nep because he is so 
 fond of the water, he likes to be in it all the time, once he got 
 caught in the weeds and was nearly drowned."' 
 
 The fault here consists not in stringing together a number 
 of statements by "ands", but in running complete statements 
 
T 6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 together without periods and capitals. Sometimes no mark 
 separates the sentences. If any mark is employed, it is only 
 the comma. Hence it is that text-book writers, in referring to 
 this fault, call it "the comma sentence." So common is tne 
 blunder in the writing of young children that it has come to 
 be known as The Child's Error. To make the offence more 
 heinous in the sight of his pupils one teacher is known to have 
 named it "The Baby's Mistake". In high school text-books 
 (because of our neglect the fault often persists beyond the 
 elementary school) it is variously referred to as "the badge of 
 ignorance", "the badge of shiftlessness", "the hopeless error". 
 These epithets indicate how important it. is that this fault 
 should be gotten rid of early, if it is to be gotten rid of at all. 
 Calling names, however, seldom does any good. What we need 
 to remember is that the habit of running sentences together, 
 either by the "and" method or the "no stop" method is an 
 exceedingly unfortunate one, and very hard to overcome, if it 
 once gets a good start. 
 
 If a close study is made of children's compositions with 
 reference to The Child's Error, it will be found to occur most 
 often when there is a close relation between one sentence and 
 the next. This close relation is present whenever the succeeding 
 sentence begins with a pronoun, the antecedent of which is 
 the subject of the preceding sentence. Thus, in the illustration 
 above, "My dog is a spaniel, his name is Nep," the child is 
 conscious of a very close relation between the two statements. 
 He has a dog, and the dog's name is Nep. For this reason, 
 children are particularly in danger of committing the Child's 
 Error when a sentence begins with he, she, it, they, tins, 
 these, etc., because sentences beginning with these words, while 
 heing grammatically independent, are somewhat dependent for 
 their meaning upon the preceding sentence. In the same way, 
 a clause or a phrase coming at the end of a sentence is likely 
 to be thought of as an independent statement. It is easy for 
 the child to forget it is a part of the sentence. Thus : "Wash- 
 ington once saved a child. Jumping into a swift stream to 
 save it." Or : "And so the boy got the sled after all. Which 
 was just what he wanted." Trained writers do not place clauses 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 17 
 
 and phrases in such places. But beginners are crude in the 
 art of sentence structure, and for this reason are prone to use 
 the rear-end phrase or clause, set off as an independent state- 
 ment marked by both capital and period. 
 
 It has been thought worth while to present the problem of 
 the sentence in considerable detail, and to call attention to some 
 of the reasons which render pupils peculiarly liable to the 
 errors we have been describing. The mastery of the sentence 
 is absolutely basal in elementary written work. It is folly to 
 talk about teaching "style" and the other refinements of writing 
 until children are sentence-sure. There are a good many things 
 we would do, if we could. A few we must do. "There is no 
 use in trying" to build a superstructure, when the foundation is 
 lacking. And the foundation of all writing — of all expression 
 of thought — is the sentence. 
 
 CORRECT SPELLING OF COMMON WORDS. 
 
 There are two things in the general run of school com- 
 positions that, above all others, make countless teachers mourn. 
 The first is the bad sentence — the "stringy" sentence, the 
 "comma sentence", or worse, the sentence that is not a sentence 
 at all. This was dealt with in the preceding chapter. The 
 other is the misspelling of common words. If these two 
 conspicuous defects were absent from the compositions, how 
 much brighter the world would seem to the teacher who sits 
 down resignedly to correct a set of papers. Even a paper 
 absolutely wooden in respect to interest and style, if it were 
 free from these two glaring faults, would seem positively 
 hopeful. 
 
 We have been teaching spelling faithfully enough, but we 
 have not been teaching it intelligently enough. We have been 
 wasting precious time teaching children how to spell thousands 
 of w^ords they seldom or never write, while we have not taught 
 them to spell the really small number of words that they write 
 all the time. The trouble has been that our material of spelling 
 has been chosen without reference to the fact that children 
 
x8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 possess three vocabularies (a reading, a speaking, and a writing 
 vocabulary) and that spelling relates only to the last of these, 
 the writing vocabulary. All this is admirably summed up in 
 the conclusions of the investigation of the material of spelling 
 made last year by the Division of Education in the University 
 of South Dakota. Here are three of them: 
 
 I. Since students in the highest grade of our common schools 
 have on the average less than 2,500 words in their writing, or 
 spelling, vocabularies, our first conclusion is, our spelling material 
 is bad in that it gives thousands of words which children do not 
 use, and at the same time we are not teaching them to spell the 
 much smaller lists of words which they do use. 
 
 2. The words which give most trouble in spelling are found, 
 almost without exception, in the writing vocabularies of the lower 
 grades ; and since these troublesome but useful words are not 
 pointed out and effectively dealt with in these early grades, our 
 handling of the most dangerous spelling material is not efficient, 
 and students go on misspelling-, year after year, words that should 
 be mastered in the early school years. 
 
 3. Since grade students commonly use from 500 to 2,500 
 words in writing, yet on the average misspell but about fifty words, 
 not one child out of a thousand misspelling as many as one hundred 
 words, our spelling problem is not so gigantic as it is commonly 
 believed to be, for the reason that a handful of words misspelled 
 over and over by each student has misled us in our judgment. 
 
 A list of about two hundred common words frequently mis- 
 spelled is printed in this course of study (under assignment of 
 work by grades), upon which teachers are asked to place 
 special emphasis in their teaching of spelling. The list contains 
 practically all of the "one hundred spelling demons" of the 
 South Dakota report. Some of the words are repeated every 
 year. Most of the words are introduced early in the course. 
 A vigorous campaign against this handful of troublesome words 
 for the space of a single year would go a long way toward 
 banishing from school compositions the great bulk of the 
 spelling errors which at present disfigure them. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 19 
 
 SUBJECTS SHOULD BE CONCRETE, PERSONAL, 
 DEFINITE, AND BRIEF. 
 
 A good subject is half the battle. Children cannot be 
 expected to write upon a subject about which they know little 
 and care less. You cannot get blood out of a turnip. 
 
 Subjects should be chosen within the range of the pupil's 
 knowledge and interests. Children like best what they know 
 most about, and they love to write when they know what they 
 are writing about. There is all the difference in the world 
 between "having to say something and having something to say." 
 
 Knowdedge and interest, therefore, are necessary conditions 
 for good work in composition. Children's lives are crowded 
 with incidents ; they have plenty of ideas and opinions which 
 they are eager to express. Every child who is not feeble- 
 minded has something worth saying if he is given a decent 
 chance to say it. From their life at home, in the streets, in 
 school ; from their sports, amusements, duties, tasks ; from the 
 things they have seen and heard and felt and done ; from the 
 things they read and the things they imagine : from all these 
 may be drawn an almost endless variety of subjects, full of the 
 breath of life and the actuality of experience. 
 
 Some children, of course, are less keen in their observation 
 than others, and all children need to have their eyes opened and 
 their wits sharpened to see interesting themes in the incidents 
 and experiences which make up their daily life. To ' teach 
 children to observe closely and to think clearly and consecutively 
 is one of the chief values of training in composition. In 
 handling subjects drawn from every day life there will be need 
 at first for the teacher to exercise skill in keeping the children's 
 compositions from becoming trite and trivial. This she can 
 do by training children to discover interest in common things, 
 and by suggesting a live manner of treatment. Nothing in the 
 world is commonplace unless we make it so. 
 
 Subjects, then, should be personal and concrete. They need 
 not always be of actual experience. Children have strong 
 imaginations and can project themselves into a "figured" 
 
20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 environment. They like nothing better than to write from the 
 standpoint of some imaginary person who for the moment they 
 believe themselves to be. Even in writing about an actual 
 experience there is always room for the play of imagination. 
 Indeed, it is only in terms of the imagination that the actual 
 can be interpreted. 
 
 Besides being personal and concrete, subjects should be 
 definite and brief. "How I Spent My Vacation" is concrete 
 and personal ; but it lacks the second essential of a good sub- 
 ject: it is neither definite nor brief. It is impossible for any 
 child to write in an interesting manner upon such a subject 
 within the limits of a single paragraph. At best, it can be no 
 more than a bare catalogue of events. Within the compass of 
 any vacation, long or short, there is a score of incidents and 
 experiences exactly suitable for narrating or describing in the 
 written paragraph, because they give opportunity for striking 
 and vivid detail ; but to ask a child to set down in a single 
 paragraph the doings of a whole vacation is to foredoom him to 
 failure. The subject of "Birds" is another example of the too 
 large topic. It has the quality of being concrete, and if the 
 pupil to whom it is assigned knows something of birds at first 
 hand, it has for him also the quality of being personal. But 
 what child, no matter how well he knows the birds, can put 
 anything of himself into a single paragraph on the general 
 subject of "Birds"? "The Oriole's Nest", on the other hand, 
 offers a specific theme for his knowledge, and he can treat it 
 adequately in an ordinary paragraph. Better even than "The 
 Oriole's Nest" would be a single phase of that interesting bit 
 of bird life, — such as the location of the nest, or its architecture, 
 or its special adaption to the use Of this bird of the golden 
 plumage and the golden voice. A child's paragraph on "A Trip 
 on a Trolley Car" is not likely to produce much beyond a 
 record of routes and running time. If, instead, the pupil should 
 describe a Sunday school party on a trolley car, en route to a 
 picnic in the morning, and a companion paragraph about tlie 
 same party's return from the picnic grove at night, hot, tired, 
 limp, and generally out of sorts, he would stand a vastly better 
 chance of writing something worth while. 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 Teachers should, therefore, narrow their subjects. This 
 focuses thinking, establishes a single point of view, and makes 
 it possible for the child to put his own thinking into his com- 
 position. After that, even, it will be found necessary to train 
 children to single out some particular point in his specific 
 subject, so as to make some one idea stand out prominently. 
 For an illustration of this take these two compositions on the 
 subject, "Coming to School". 
 
 COMING TO SCHOOL. 
 
 This morning I started from my home about eight o'clock to 
 walk to school. When I got to my friend's house, she was already 
 outside waiting for me, so we started right off. In front of us 
 were a few girls we knew. They were all talking about a party 
 they had been to the night before. My friend and I were asking 
 each other questions about our history lesson, which was to come 
 that morning. As we walked fast, we reached school about twenty 
 minutes past eight. 
 
 COMING TO SCHOOL. 
 
 It was fifteen minutes after eight o'clock when I started for 
 school with an armful of books and a feeling that I had forgotten 
 something in my hurry. A little farther along, I met my chum, 
 who joined me in my haste, for neither of us wanted to spoil our 
 records by tardiness, especially so near the beginning of the school 
 year. We seemed to make very good time, and were within sight 
 of the school building, when I suddenly remembered that 1 had 
 been told to order something at a store which we had already 
 passed on our way to school. So I left my friend, ran back a 
 short distance, and entered the store, entirely out of breath. As 
 nobody was in sight to wait on me, I coughed as loud as I could, 
 and soon a young man came out from the rear of the store, slowly 
 putting on his white coat. It seemed to me that I stood there half 
 an hour while he fixed his coat and wrote down my order, but 
 it was really only two minutes. At the end of that time I rushed 
 from the store and ran the remaining short distance to the school 
 as fast as I knew how. Luckily, I didn't have to climb any stairs, 
 but reached my room and sank into my chair out of breath, just 
 as the last bell rang. Right there and then I made up my mind 
 that I would start for school earlier, for I do not like such 
 narrow escapes. 
 
22 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The first composition is ineffective because it recounts a 
 mere string of happenings, which make no particular impression. 
 The second one is much more effective, because it brings out 
 strongly the single thought of how close a call the writer had 
 from being tardy. It illustrates, too, the three principles which 
 children should gradually be taught to observe in their paragraph 
 writing : ( i ) To bring out a single point that is interesting, 
 entertaining, or instructive. (2) To select a point that can 
 be brought out in the space allowed (a single paragraph). (3) 
 To bring out the point in the most effective manner possible. 
 
 In the assignment of work by grades a number of topics 
 have been printed, as suggestive of the kind of subjects that 
 ought to be used. Nearly all of them were contributed by 
 teachers. Some effort has been made to grade them, though 
 this arrangement is not important. The subjects listed under 
 one grade may well be used in any other, with or without 
 adaptation. The treatment of them will, of course, be different 
 according to the age of the pupils, their growing maturity of 
 thought, and their experience and skill in writing. It is not 
 intended that only these subjects shall be used, or that any 
 of them shall be used, if teachers can invent better ones. 
 After all, the teacher is the best judge of the subjects her 
 children are interested in and about which, consequently, they 
 can write with confidence and pleasure. The reason for printing 
 them at all is to indicate the kind of subjects which should 
 invariably be chosen — concrete, personal, definite, and brief. 
 
 THE CORRECTION OF COMPOSITIONS. 
 
 "How shall I correct my written work?" For years this 
 question has been asked oftener perhaps than any other 
 question connected with the teaching of English. It is an 
 important question, and the attempts to answer it have done 
 much to remove from our practice some things that were 
 wasteful, if not positively wrong. But there still remains 
 considerable difference of opinion as to just what is the right 
 thins: to do. Some teachers believe that the teacher should 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 note and mark every mistake, and that papers should be re- 
 written with every mistake removed. Others, in revolt against 
 the "reign of red-ink", have gone to the extreme of thinking that 
 little or no correction of papers is necessary, and that correct 
 language habits will somehow come down from the skies, if 
 the pupil is required to write often enough. These teachers are 
 fond of quoting, "The way to learn how to write is to write." 
 But that isn't the whole story. The way to learn to write is to 
 write under the right kind of instruction and correction. 
 
 As a matter of fact the question of "How shall I correct 
 my written work ?" cannot be answered intelligently until 
 another much more important one is answered, "Why do I 
 correct my written work?" 
 
 Judging from a very common practice of the teacher to 
 go over every paper and correct every mistake, one would 
 suppose the chief purpose of the teacher's correction was to 
 secure a correct composition. She marks all misspelled words, 
 puts in a capital here and period there, inserts a comma 
 occasionally, straightens up an awkward sentence or two, deftly 
 combines a pair of jerky sentences into a single smooth one, 
 and maybe writes a closing sentence to make the composition 
 finish strong. Then the pupil "re-writes" it, in his best hand- 
 writing (making a few mistakes in the "revise" that he did 
 not make the first time) and the composition is put away with 
 others as a sample of the pupil's work. 
 
 The next day she does the same. So do the pupils. With 
 smiling serenity they repeat in their compositions the mistakes 
 of yesterday, and of last week, and of last year, which all the 
 while the teacher has been laboriously marking on their papers. 
 For hundreds of years teachers have been correcting com- 
 positions in some such way as this, and their pupils have gone 
 on making just the same mistakes over and over again. 
 Evidently we have been going up the wrong street. 
 
 It is not the composition that we want to make perfect. 
 We want to make the pupil's pozver to write one a little less 
 imperfect. The product upon which we expend our red ink is 
 of slight importance compared with the poiver which it should be 
 the teacher's aim to develop. None of us can turn out in a 
 
24 INTRODUCTION 
 
 first draft a perfect copy of what we wish to say. We are 
 compelled to look over our work carefully, to correct it, to be 
 perpetually on the lookout for errors in our English, in our 
 punctuation, even in our spelling. That is precisely what the 
 teacher's correction should train children to do — or to begin 
 to do. The purpose of the teacher's correction is to cultivate 
 in her pupils the habit of self-criticism. The only correction 
 of compositions that is of any earthly use is that which trains 
 children to correct their own. This cannot be attained by red- 
 inking every mistake, for the purpose of future correction, nor 
 by neglecting to red-ink at all. It can only be attained by 
 following out consistently all through the grades a method 
 based on several very important principles. 
 
 1. There must be some degree of progression in the work 
 of correction. It is useless to attempt to correct everything in 
 every composition. No child should be expected to turn out an 
 absolutely perfect paper. To secure a habit of correct ex- 
 pression, the only economical procedure is to see to it that the 
 children work from month to month to correct a few mistakes 
 at a time. Pupils will thus be more likely to have in mind, at 
 any given period, the errors they are to avoid, and v* ill 
 accordingly tend to grow self-critical. 
 
 2. It is well to remember that the object of correcting is 
 not to mark the pupil, but to help the pupil. This being so, it 
 follows that the teacher will more likely be of genuine service 
 to the pupil if she will enter so sympathetically into the work 
 as to appreciate the individual difficulties of the writer. Here 
 lies the value of the conference period. By sitting down by the 
 side of the pupil and reading over his composition with him, 
 the teacher can come into a direct personal relationship. This 
 conference is, with many children, held most effectively when 
 they are writing. 
 
 3. Pupils should be taught how to criticise, and how to 
 intelligently appreciate their own and one another's work. 
 Thus criticism by the teacher, which is indispensable, may be 
 supplemented by trained criticism on the part of the writer's 
 classmates. In teaching children how to criticise, teachers 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 25 
 
 should suggest a definite plan to be followed by them. Points 
 like the following are suggestive : 
 
 1. Read the composition through. 
 
 2. Is it interesting? Tell one thing that made it so. 
 
 3. Did he write as if he were interested in his subject? 
 
 4. Did the writer keep to his subject. Did he put anything in it 
 that was unnecessary? 
 Were any of the expressions new to you? 
 Mention any apt word that you noticed. 
 Indicate a particularly good sentence, or sentences. 
 Indicate a sentence or sentences that could be improved. 
 Help the pupil to restate it. 
 
 Correct grammatical errors. 
 Correct mechanical errors. 
 
 4. Many mistakes can be prevented by forewarning. 
 Prevent means "to go before". 
 
 5. The teacher should never forget that criticism deals 
 with merits as well as with defects. 
 
 Teachers must remember that the matter of the pupil's 
 correction of his own work depends on his interest. You 
 cannot develop the power of self-criticism in the boy who 
 doesn't care whether he is right or wrong. One teacher can 
 compel a boy to write a composition, but the whole school 
 department cannot make him correct it intelligently unless he 
 ■wants to. It is the teacher's business to make him want to. 
 
 There will not be much chance of his wanting to correct 
 his own written work or much profit in letting him assist in the 
 correction of other pupils' compositions until the following 
 things shall have been done : 
 
 1. There must be aroused in him the desire for self- 
 expression. 
 
 2. He must be led to see that there are ways of 
 saying things which are better than other ways ; that 
 there is something which we call "good English", which 
 it is worth while learning how to use. 
 
 3. He must be led honestly to prefer the better way 
 of saying things to the way that was good enough for 
 him before. 
 
2 (j INTRODUCTION 
 
 4. His criticism of his own work must at first be 
 directed until it is impartial and unsparing. 
 
 5. His criticism of others must be directed and 
 controlled. Criticism, like charity, should begin at home, 
 but it very often does not. Until a pupil has proved him- 
 self a careful critic of his own compositions, he should 
 not be allowed to criticise the work of others. At all 
 times children, as well as teachers, must remember that 
 criticism is quite as much a matter of merit as it is of 
 mistakes. Pupils must be taught to realize when a thing 
 is good, to be made to think why it is good, and to learn 
 what it means to commend as well as to condemn. 
 
 In the upper grades, the pupil's observance of the following 
 rules will minimize the necessity of the teacher's correction: 
 
 1. To select a subject for the composition paragraph out of his 
 observation, experience, or reading, which he knows he can 
 write about interestingly within the limits of a single paragraph, 
 and to decide just what phase of the subject to write about. 
 
 2. To think it over before writing, so as to make a sort of mental 
 outline of what he is going to write. 
 
 3. To use fairly short sentences, each of which has one and only 
 one principal thought. 
 
 4. After the first writing, to correct and improve his paragraph, 
 by reading it over several times, each time with a distinct 
 object in view. 
 
 a) The first time to improve the paragraph as a whole ; to put 
 in facts or ideas forgotten ; to use a more expressive verb 
 here or a more telling adjective there; to make the ending 
 as effective as possible: in general, to satisfy himself on the 
 spot that he has done with the subject the best he knows 
 how. 
 
 b) The second time to improve his sentence structure and his 
 grammar ; to note when a long sentence may be broken 
 into two shorter ones with advantage, or when a succession 
 of very short sentences, giving a "choppy" effect, may be 
 made into slightly longer sentences, connected by some 
 other words than "and", or "but", and other overworked 
 connectives ; to see that every verb agrees in number with 
 its subject, and every pronoun with its antecedent. 
 
 c) The third time to make sure that every sentence begins 
 with a capital and ends with the proper mark; to see that 
 
INTRODUCTION 27 
 
 commas are used where they are necessary to the sense-; to 
 run his eyes over the words to see that each is spelled 
 correctly, particularly those words which have proved his 
 downfall many times before. 
 
 Let it be remarked, in closing, that no child profits much 
 from re-writing his composition. It is a good deal more 
 sensible to let him apply what he has learned from his teacher's 
 correction to a new composition. There are times, of course, 
 when slovenly work must be penalized by compelling the 
 perpetrator to do his work over. But the ordinary re-writing 
 of papers, to secure a "high finish", is generally a waste of 
 precious time. 
 
 COPYING AND DICTATION AS AIDS IN TEACHING 
 COMPOSITION. 
 
 The dictation exercise, if employed in moderation and with 
 a clear understanding of its use, is valuable in helping to fix 
 habits of written technicalities, — spelling, capitals, punctuation, 
 and things of that sort. It performs the same office as abstract 
 work in arithmetic. In the dictation exercise we isolate the 
 forms of language and focus attention entirely upon them. In 
 writing compositions the centre of attention is occupied by the 
 content (the ideas that are coming to the surface for expres- 
 sion), while the technique (the writing, spelling, punctuation, 
 etc.) is, or should be, removed to the margin of consciousness. 
 In the dictation exercise these relative positions are reversed. 
 The content comes to the pupil ready-made ; he has to think 
 only of the form. 
 
 In addition to its value in teaching and testing technicalities, 
 the dictation exercise, if rightly managed, builds up, also, the 
 power of sustained attention and concentration. Its never 
 failing effect of restoring quiet in a restless class is an every- 
 day evidence of its power to do this. Its value, in developing 
 the power of concentration, however, depends very largely upon 
 the way the teacher handles the exercise. The dictation may 
 be too long ; it may be uninteresting to the pupils ; it may be 
 
2 g INTRODUCTION 
 
 dictated poorly — indistinctly, too fast, too slowly, or with 
 repetitions. Dictation is an exercise that requires as much care 
 in preparation and skill in execution as any other kind of 
 written composition. It is utterly useless in the hands of a 
 teacher who because she has no other work prepared decides 
 to "give them a little dictation". She had better send to the 
 office for the graphophone. 
 
 The dictation exercise is useful also in developing the 
 power of self-criticism, because of the opportunity it affords 
 pupils to correct their Own papers in every minute detail by 
 comparing them with the teacher's blackboard copy (uncovered 
 after the writing) or the printed original. No exercises are 
 more important than exercises in which the pupil corrects his 
 own written work. Careful and intelligent criticism of his own 
 work fixes correct habits and develops a habit of discrimination 
 which helps him to undertake new work more confidently and 
 to execute it more accurately. The dictation exercise is an 
 especially good starting point for training in self-correction, 
 because here the field of criticism is limited to a small number 
 of points, all of which have to do with the mechanics of writing, 
 and all of which, besides, are arbitrarily determined by the 
 matter dictated. A formula for correction, suited to the grade, 
 may be written upon the board, or upon a card which each 
 pupil has on his desk. Such a formula contains (let us say) 
 the following points : 
 
 i. Indenting the paragraph. 5. Comma. 
 
 2. Capitals. 6. Quotation marks. 
 
 3. Periods. 7. Spelling. 
 
 4. Apostrophe. 
 
 The pupils are instructed at first to look through their 
 papers for one kind of a mistake at a time, until they have 
 gone through the list. They correct each error as they find it. 
 In this way not many errors will escape them. After a while 
 they will outgrow the need of the formula as a correction 
 chart ; but at the beginning it serves a very useful purpose. 
 It helps to systematize the correction work, and impresses upon 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 29 
 
 the pupil's mind, more effectively than talking commonly can, 
 what the big matters of written technique are. 
 
 In order to prevent any false notion as to the proper place 
 <>f dictation work, teachers should bear in mind that it is an 
 exercise which is almost wholly mechanical, and that no amount 
 of dictation alone will make good writers. It is concerned 
 with mechanical correctness alone. It is not of much value as a 
 teaching exercise. Its chief value is in testing, not in teaching. 
 It is not even a safe test of the knowledge of language forms. 
 The proof of a pupil's mastery of the mechanics is not a 
 correctly written dictation lesson, but his habitual observance 
 of these matters in his daily writing. The pupil who begins all 
 the sentences of a dictation paragraph with a capital and ends 
 them with a period, may in his free writing display a gross 
 lack of "the sentence feeling''. The cadence of the teacher's 
 voice and the natural pause which follows the close of a 
 dictated sentence give him the cue as to when a period is 
 required and where a capital must be employed. 
 
 The same is true in a lesser degree in respect to the other 
 points of technique. Teachers, therefore, will make a mistake 
 if they think they can teach correctness by much use of the 
 dictation exercise. It is a good thing, if rightly used. But it 
 must be used with moderation and with the full knozdedge 
 that its chief value is to test the result of the teaching of xhe 
 mechanics. 
 
 Teachers are inclined sometimes to give an undue amount 
 of dictation, because their class happens to be poorly grounded 
 on the mechanics, and they postpone original work until a 
 satisfactory condition obtains with respect to their pupil's grasp 
 of technique. This is a double mistake. Correctness cannot 
 be produced from much use of the dictation exercise, because 
 the kind of correctness it teaches cannot be depended upon to 
 carry over into the pupil's free writing. Moreover, to postpone 
 original writing until the technique has been fully mastered is 
 a violation of a vital principle of composition teaching, which 
 is that the motive for the mastery of form must come from 
 the pupil's interest in a real and living content. To drill for a 
 long time for correctness is death to all interest. To permit 
 
3o 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 children to write without regard to form is quite as irrational. 
 They must be trained simultaneously to develop the power of 
 self-expression and the knowledge and the desire to express 
 themselves on paper in accordance with the established rules 
 of correct writing. To do this well, as has been said before, 
 is the real test of the good teacher of written composition. 
 
 Copying is useful, as an occasional exercise, to train pupils 
 in careful observation and exact expression. These are qualities 
 sufficiently rare in grown-up people to suggest the need of some 
 organized effort upon the part of the school to develop in 
 children the power to see things straight and to report them 
 straight. It is the experience of the Civil Service examiners 
 that more people fail in the copying test than in any other. 
 The standard of copying in all grades is exactness itself, though 
 the matter presented in the lower grades should, of course, be 
 much shorter and simpler than that which is given to older 
 pupils to copy. The mere act of copying from time to time 
 will not lead anywhere. Children must be taught right habits- 
 of copying. In the second grade, for example, the pupil should 
 be taught to look at the whole word and then write the whole 
 word, not to copy a letter or two, then look at the word again, 
 and copy two or three more letters. Even in the lower grades, 
 the smallest unit should be the word. As soon after as 
 possible, children should learn to look at the whole sentence^ 
 and instead of copying it word by word, looking back each 
 time to the printed page, they should copy a whole phrase at a 
 time. Later on the pupils should take in the whole sentence at 
 one glance, and produce it without referring to the copy. 
 
 Selections for copying for all grades should be interesting,, 
 and in the higher grades they should have real literary quality. 
 National songs and selections frequently repeated orally (e. g. r 
 the salute to the flag) are suitable material for copying. It is 
 notorious that children are seldom able to write such things 
 correctly. This is because the words are mostly learned by ear.. 
 
 A time limit should be set to exercises in copying, if a 
 pupil's power of observation and accuracy are to be rightly/ 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 31 
 
 measured. A teacher cannot measure the power of all the 
 individuals in her class if some are given twice as long as 
 others to finish the same exercise. Above the fourth grade, 
 work in copying should be required of those pupils only who 
 have not become rapid and accurate copyists. A copying test 
 should be given three or four times during each year above the 
 fourth grade to determine who need to continue the work and 
 who may be excused from it. This test should be timed, and 
 the selection should be longer than can be done in the time 
 allowed, so that the speed and accuracy of every pupil can be 
 rated after the method of the Courtis tests. Any exercise in 
 copying that does not keep every child on the tiptoe of alertness 
 defeats its only purpose. 
 
 Children should be given material in their books to copy. 
 They should not be asked to write from copy on the blackboaul. 
 
PART TWO. 
 
 ASSIGNMENT OF WORK BY GRADES. 
 
 FIRST GRADE. 
 
 (The ivork of the First Grade is entirely oral.) 
 
 I. Aims. 
 
 To encourage free talk about things that children are 
 interested in. 
 
 To secure clear articulation and correct forms in every- 
 day speech. 
 
 To lead children always to use the sentence in talking and 
 in telling stories. 
 
 Children's talk should be free, spontaneous, and hearty. 
 While encouraging self-expression, it is the teacher's task to 
 guide and control the speech, to prevent mere babbling, and to 
 make the exercise a pleasure to both listener and talker. 
 
 With regard to ability to express themselves, . an average 
 class will be found to be divided into the garrulous, the 
 monosyllabic, and the inarticulate. The garrulous must not 
 be suppressed, but directed, — -"Tell me one thing about your 
 doll." The monosyllabic must be encouraged to expand a word 
 into a sentence ; next, to give two sentences, and finally, to tell 
 the whole story. The inarticulate will soon follow the leaders 
 and take part in this work ; they form the rear guard here as in 
 all other kinds of school work. 
 
 II. Topics. 
 
 Child's experiences at home ; — helping mother, father ; 
 playthings ; pets ; holiday and Saturday good times. 
 
FIRST GRADE 
 
 33 
 
 Child's activities at school ; — helping teacher, playmates ; 
 on the playground ; the reading lesson ; dramatization ; story 
 reproduction ; picture lessons ; games ; holidays. 
 
 Observations of nature ; — flowers, birds, animals ; the 
 seasons with their changes in earth, sky and air. 
 
 Stories read by the teacher or by the children. 
 
 First, as sources of material for oral composition, should 
 come the child's own experience and observation. Second in 
 importance comes the story told by the teacher, or read in class 
 by the child himself. Not all stories, however, are fit for 
 reproduction, — the short, simple story, with a clear beginning, 
 a related middle, and a definite end is best. The first conception 
 of orderly arrangement will come unconsciously to children by 
 developing these three divisions in their reproduction. 
 
 III. Illustrations, 
 
 A number of illustrations are given here to show what an 
 interesting variety of oral work can be developed from the 
 above mentioned sources and to indicate the general character 
 of the oral work that should be sought after in the first grade. 
 They are not put here to be drilled upon and memorized by 
 children. They are illustrations pure and simple, and are not at 
 all intended as subject matter to be learned by heart. 
 
 /. Suggestions for developing, guiding, and controlling first 
 efforts: 
 
 Illustration : 
 
 i. "Mollie had a birthday she was six she had a party I 
 was there and I wore my new blue dress and we had ice cream." 
 Teacher: — "Tell me one thing about Mollie's birthday." 
 
 2. A suggestion from the teacher — (given on Friday). 
 "Tomorrow will be Saturday. I expect to take a walk. I 
 
 think I shall see some little squirrels." 
 
 "Who is going to walk? What do you expect to see?" 
 
 3. A report from the teacher — (given on Monday). 
 
 "I went to walk on Saturday. I saw four little squirrels 
 playing together." 
 
 "Who went to walk? What did you see? Tell me one thing." 
 
34 
 
 FIRST GRADE 
 
 4. Teacher : — "This is a bright, pleasant day. What do you 
 like to do on such days ? Tell me three things." 
 
 Child : — -"This is a bright pleasant day. 
 
 I like to roll my hoop. 
 
 My dog likes to run with me." 
 
 5. Teacher: — "The weather is growing warmer every day. 
 The birds are coming back. Tell me what one you saw first. Tell 
 me what he is doing." 
 
 Child : — "The weather is growing warmer every day. 
 
 The birds are coming back. 
 
 I saw the robin first. 
 
 He is getting ready to build a nest." 
 
 6. Teacher : — "I saw three little boys playing horse in the ■ 
 street this morning. They seemed to enjoy it very much." 
 
 What do you like to play best? 
 
 Tell how you play. 
 
 Tell who plays with you." 
 
 Suggestive talk on child's experiences at home. 
 HELPING. 
 
 In vacation, I helped my mother make four beds every day. 
 
 First, we turned the mattress. 
 
 Then we put on the sheets and spread. 
 
 We made it look very smooth. 
 
 Mother said I saved her many steps. 
 
 PETS. 
 
 I have a canary. 
 
 He takes a bath every day. 
 
 Then he dries himself in the sun. 
 
 PLAYTHINGS. 
 
 My doll has a little bedroom. 
 It has a bed and a table. 
 She has a little kitchen, too. 
 There is a stove in it. 
 
 HOLIDAY. 
 
 This is the month of May. 
 
 There are thirty-one days in May. 
 
 Memorial Day comes on the thirtieth. 
 
 SATURDAY. 
 
 Saturday I played soldier with my brothers. 
 My big brother was the captain. 
 The baby carried the flag: 
 I beat the drum. 
 
FIRST GRADE -- 
 
 3. Suggestive talk on child's activities at school. 
 READING. 
 
 The little old woman made a gingerbread boy. 
 
 He ran away from her and from the little old man. 
 
 But he couldn't run away from the fox. 
 
 Boy Blue always wore blue clothes. 
 
 One day, he fell fast asleep under a haycock. 
 
 His sheep got into the meadow. 
 
 His cows got into the corn. 
 
 DRAMATIZATION. 
 
 The grasshopper played all summer long. 
 He had no food when winter came. 
 He asked Lady Ant for some of hers. 
 But she wouldn't give him any. 
 
 STORY REPRODUCTION. 
 
 The crow said, "I am so thirsty! 
 I have had no water for a long time. 
 I shall die pretty soon, I think. 
 Ah ! there is a pitcher. 
 Now I shall get a drink." 
 
 PICTURE. 
 
 I am a soldier boy. 
 I am going to war. 
 I am going to fight. 
 I am taking my gun. 
 
 GAMES. 
 
 I like to play "Squirrel". 
 
 We all stand in a ring. 
 
 One girl is the squirrel and runs around the ring. 
 
 Another tries to catch the squirrel before she gets into her place. 
 
 It is fun to chase the squirrel. 
 
 4. Suggestive talk on Observations of Nature. 
 FLOWERS. 
 
 I picked some purple asters last Sunday. 
 I brought them to school on Monday. 
 I gave them to my teacher. 
 
 BIRDS. 
 
 I saw a robin this morning. 
 
 He went hopping along. 
 
 I said, "How do you do?" 
 
 He just shook his tail and flew away. 
 
36 FIRST GRADE 
 
 ANIMALS. 
 
 I have a black kitty. 
 She loves to catch mice. 
 I like to play with her. 
 
 TREES. 
 
 I wish I were an elm tree ! 
 
 The wind would set my leaves to dancing. 
 
 The birds would build their nests in my branches. 
 
 SNOW. 
 
 The snow is falling. 
 The flakes are white. 
 They are like stars. 
 Let us catch some. 
 
 WIND. 
 
 The wind called the little leaves. 
 The red ones came. 
 The yellow ones came, too. 
 Then they all played together. 
 
 APRIL. 
 
 April is here. 
 
 See how bright and clear the sky is ! 
 
 See how green the grass is ! 
 
 I am glad April is here. 
 
 IV. Preparation For Written Work. 
 
 The seat work called for by both of the reading systems 
 used in our schools is really the foundation for future written 
 work, in that it constantly gives practice, in the construction of 
 sentences, in the placing of capital letters at the beginning of 
 sentences and proper names, and in the placing of the closing 
 period or question mark. 
 
 After the work of the initial stage of matching single 
 words has been done, children should be required to make the 
 full rhyme from the rhyme card or the complete sentence from 
 the teacher's model on the blackboard. Here the opportunity 
 occurs to correct any tendency to omit words, by having the 
 reading of what has actually been made compared with what 
 was intended to be made. 
 
FIRST GRADE 
 
 37 
 
 Next, children should he furnished with alphabet letter 
 cards, and required to construct simple sentences, connected 
 with the reading, from the teacher's blackboard model, using 
 capitals and closing marks correctly. 
 
 During the last half of the year, simple, original sentences 
 should be required, first using the word cards, and next, using 
 the alphabet letters. This gives the child full responsibility for 
 right use of capitals and closing marks. 
 
 Illustrations of Scat Work as preparation for Written Work. 
 
 ALDINE CLASSES. 
 
 The squirrel wants to play with me. 
 The little squirrel is glad. 
 The little squirrel jumps for joy. 
 Little squirrel, jump for joy. 
 Run, little squirrel, run ! 
 Play in the tree, little squirrel. 
 The little squirrel plays in the rain. 
 
 TREADWELL CLASSES. 
 A boy had a goat. 
 He ran away. 
 He wanted some grass. 
 He would not go home. 
 He would not go for the buy. 
 He would not go for the rabbit. 
 He did go for the bee. 
 
 Illustration of child's name and address: 
 
 Alary Salitra, 
 
 15 Common St., 
 
 Lawrence, Mass. 
 
 Before leaving the grade, children should make, with 
 alphabet letters, their own names and addresses, and the name 
 of their school. In addition, they should have acquired the 
 habit of placing: 
 
 A capital letter at the beginning of their card-constructed 
 sentences, in composing the names of persons, and in their use 
 of the pronoun I. 
 
 A period or question mark at the close of sentences. 
 
38 FIRST GRADE 
 
 V. Errors of Speech. 
 
 Re-read the chapter in the appendix on "Common Errors 
 of Speech", to get a clear understanding of the principles and 
 the methods that teachers should follow in training away the 
 errors common to the speech of children. 
 
 This work should not be begun too early in the first grade. 
 The teacher should, of course, take note from the very first of 
 the errors made by the children, but she should be content for 
 a while with gently and patiently substituting the right ex- 
 pression for the wrong one. For the important thing at the start 
 is to secure spontaneity and free expression. After a little 
 while the incorrect expression may safely be made a basis for 
 special drill. The expressions drilled upon should, of course, 
 ibe those which appear most frequently in the actual speech of 
 the children. The drills on any expression, once begun, should 
 l)e constant. No reasons need be given by the teacher to show 
 why this form is right and the other wrong. What the child 
 needs is plenty of opportunity for repetition of the correct form. 
 'The "language game" described and illustrated in the Appendix 
 provides a happy method of securing the reiteration of the 
 form the teacher may desire to impress. There is no end to 
 the number of games that the ingenious teacher can plan to 
 meet a single incorrect expression, e. g., the 'T seen" habit. 
 
 The errors to be attacked in grade one are not many, but 
 they are deep rooted in the speech of the children, and will 
 require the untiring efforts of the teacher to get rid of them. 
 They divide into four groups: (i) verb errors; (2) pronoun 
 errors; (3) colloquialisms; (4) mispronunciations. The teacher 
 in the primary grades, however, is not in her teaching 10 make 
 
 , any reference to these distinctions. They are so grouped 
 throughout the course to suggest how the teacher is herself to 
 classify the errors which she hears made frequently by her 
 pupils and which are not listed here. Every teacher should 
 supplement the printed errors by others that she has observed 
 
 ■ and noted. She should first, however, study the list of errors 
 that are printed in the grades below and above her own. It is 
 not worth while to attack some errors until later in the course. 
 
FIRST GRADE ,q 
 
 On the other hand, there are some errors that must be rooted 
 out in the low grades, if they are to be rooted out at all. 
 In the first grade, work to correct the following errors : 
 
 I seen him. I dune it. 
 
 I come to school. I run all the way. 
 
 He he's sick. He don't want to. 
 
 He ain't here. I knowed it. 
 
 Me and him did it. It was me. 
 
 My father, he said — 
 
 Look't This after. 
 
 He took it off me. Gimme that. 
 
 Lemme see it. I ain't got no book. 
 
 Once they was a man who — 
 
 VI. Comments and Cautions. 
 
 Do not allow a voluble child to monopolize unduly the time 
 of the class. Do not allow an impulsive child to relate some 
 personal experience which is of small interest to other children. 
 Time is too valuable to be wasted in this way. The talkative 
 child must be wisely restrained, and the uncommunicative child 
 encouraged. 
 
 Insist on clear utterances and a natural (not a schoolroom) 
 tone of voice. 
 
 Don't interrupt the talker if you can help it, and correct 
 in such a way that the child will be conscious only of the help. 
 It is very harmful at this stage to arouse self -consciousness or 
 a feeling of restraint. 
 
 Do all you can to cure the "and" habit. 
 
 Children are very imitative. Consequently it is necessary 
 that the teacher should carefully watch her own use of 
 
40 
 
 FIRST GRADE 
 
 English. Without being too prim, she should insistently guard 
 against slang, faulty idioms, grammatical errors, and provincial 
 forms. She should cultivate habits of perfect enunciation, 
 flexibility of tone, and a varied vocabulary. The teacher who 
 cannot and does not talk well herself has no business to try 
 to teach children to talk well. 
 
 Train children to drop the voice at the end of the sentence. 
 
FIRST GRADE ^ x 
 
 SECOND GRADE. 
 
 ORAL. 
 
 (Four-fifths of the language time in the second grade is 
 devoted to oral language.) 
 
 I. Aims. 
 
 To secure more freedom and fluency in talking. 
 
 To lead children to tell what they have to say in m 
 orderly manner, and to keep to the point. 
 
 To increase the power to use correct speech without 
 rousing self-consciousness or a feeling of restraint. 
 
 To make children feel that distinct speech and a natural, 
 pleasant tone of voice are as necessary to good talking as are 
 interesting things to talk about. 
 
 To deepen the feeling for the sentence — never to let an 
 "incomplete" sentence pass. Encourage use of the question 
 sentence and the exclamation, for variety and effectiveness, 
 without naming them or formally distinguishing them from the 
 "telling" sentence. 
 
 II. Suggested Sources. 
 
 Child's experiences at home : Helping father, mother, 
 sisters and brothers. 
 
 Talks on how to act helpfully and politely at home, at 
 school, on the playground, and in public places. 
 
 Observation of the nature world. 
 
 Holidays. 
 
 Games. 
 
 Stories. Stories selected for reproduction should be short 
 and simple. At the beginning of the term, those which bring 
 out clearly the beginning, the middle, and the close should be 
 used. Later in the term, children will be able to reproduce 
 larger units, if they are helped to observe what happened first, 
 what next, and so forth. Events may be told in turn by 
 different children, and finally the whole story reproduced by 
 one child. 
 
42 
 
 FIRST GRADE 
 
 Pictures. Pictures furnish admirable material for oral 
 language. They should be full of life and action. 
 
 III. Illustrations. 
 
 (Note: — It is to be understood that these are illustrations 
 of the kind of oral work that second grade children should be 
 trained to do. They are not put here as subject matter for 
 children to be drilled upon and to repeat from memory.) 
 
 Using the material offered by the class, teacher and children 
 should work together, at first, developing an orderly arrange- 
 ment of ideas and interesting ways of presenting them. 
 
 Children should later be encouraged to give original 
 sentences. The teacher and class together should offer sug- 
 gestions for improving the order and arrangement of the 
 sentences to make them more interesting. These should be 
 written on the board by the teacher, to serve as a copying 
 lesson later. 
 
 EXPERIENCES AT HOME. 
 I take care of the geranium. 
 I water it every day. 
 
 Yesterday I spilled some water on the floor. 
 The pitcher was too full. 
 
 NATURE. 
 
 Walter's garden is in the back yard. 
 
 He planted morning glory seeds and tulip bulbs. 
 
 The morning glory seeds have come up. 
 
 The tulips will be in blossom in a week. 
 
 STORY REPRODUCTION. 
 
 A thirsty crow saw some water in a pitcher. 
 
 He could not get it. 
 
 Then the wise bird dropped many little stones into the pitcher. 
 
 The water rose and the crow took his drink. 
 
 PICTURES. 
 
 I am Captain John. 
 
 Do you see the sword in my hand ? 
 
 My army is marching. 
 
 "Left, right, left, right" says the drum. 
 
 The last boy is carrying the flag. 
 
SECOND GRADE *-, 
 
 We are playing Blind Man's Buff. 
 My brother Max is the blind man. 
 I'm hiding behind the post. 
 There ! he's coming ! he's coming ! 
 I hope he won't catch me ! 
 
 GAMES. 
 
 There are swings on the Common. 
 I like to swing very much. 
 
 After I have been swinging for a while, I get out and give 
 someone else a chance. 
 
 ANIMALS. 
 
 I have a little kitten. 
 
 Her name is Tricks. 
 
 Tricks is very cute. 
 
 She pulls at my shoe laces, and at my dress. 
 
 She always climbs up in my lap. 
 
 Would you like to see my kitty? 
 
 HOW TO TREAT A VISITOR. 
 
 Yesterday, we had a visitor in our room. 
 When she came in, Edith gave her a chair. 
 When we read, we did our best. 
 We like to have people visit our class. 
 
 IV. Common Errors of Speech. 
 
 The teacher should read over the chapter on "Common 
 Errors of Speech" in the Appendix. She should also re-read 
 the notes printed under this heading in the first grade. Keep 
 in mind the groupings of the errors, as there explained, Dut 
 do not discuss the "grammar" of them with the pupils. Study 
 the list of errors in all the grades, but confine your work 
 mostly to those of your grade and the grade below. They will 
 keep you busy. Use some "language game" every day. You 
 will find plenty of them in the chapter on "The Language 
 Game" in the Appendix. If they do not suit you, make up 
 some of your own. Language games may be played at any 
 time during the day, — to fill up a few odd minutes here and 
 there, or as a change after a period of concentrated work in 
 number or phonics. 
 
 In the second grade, work on these errors : 
 
44 
 
 SECOND GRADE 
 
 We sung it. 
 
 We et it. 
 
 I writed my name. 
 
 My pencil is broke. 
 
 You was afraid. 
 
 I can't find it no place. 
 
 I ain't got no book. 
 
 I done it. 
 
 He knowed me. 
 
 I seen it. 
 
 It's tore. 
 
 I brought it home. 
 
 We drawed a robin. 
 
 He hadn't ought to go. 
 
 He don't need a book. 
 
 He did it tiisself. 
 Me and him went. 
 
 Them kind ain't good. 
 
 I got it off a him. 
 Are they any school? 
 She told on him. 
 Look't here. 
 
 He is the one what did it. 
 He didn't give me none. 
 I was to home. 
 
 1 wash me own self. 
 He would of gone. 
 I hat to go. 
 They was six hooks. 
 
 Gimme that pencil. 
 I donno. 
 I'm thinkin. 
 
 V. Comments and Cautions. 
 
 Avoid rousing self-consciousness by too many criticisms. 
 
 Insist on careful pronunciation of final syllables ending 
 in g, t, d. 
 
 Remember that "so" and "then" are habits as bad as the 
 "and" habit. 
 
 Banish the "run-on" sentence from your children's talk, 
 if you can. 
 
 Teach children to drop the voice at the ends of their 
 sentences. 
 
SECOND GRADE 45 
 
 PREPARATION FOR WRITING. 
 
 During the first half of the year the alphabet card seat 
 work, started in the first grade, should be reviewed and ex- 
 tended. 
 
 In review, children should first make sentences from the 
 teacher's model on the blackboard. These sentences may be 
 based on the reading lessons, or on the topics discussed in the 
 oral composition period. The pupil's work should always be 
 inspected by the teacher. Her method of correcting faults 
 should be such as to teach the children to correct their own, 
 and to establish the tendency to look their work over for 
 correction before the teacher inspects it. They should be 
 trained to look it over first to see if all of the words are there ; 
 they should look again, to see if the closing marks are correctly 
 used. 
 
 In extending the work, children should be required to 
 make sentences independent of a model. These may be re- 
 production from memory of those occurring in a reading 
 lesson, in a preceding oral composition lesson, or they may be 
 original. Such work throws upon the class full responsibility 
 for right spelling and correct use of capitals and closing marks. 
 But whatever the source of these sentences, the teacher must 
 guard against incorrect spelling, and if she finds it necessary, 
 should assign the topic herself, and prevent misspelling by 
 placing on the blackboard for children's use, while working, 
 words of whose spelling the class may not be certain. The 
 work of inspection should be continued, and the iiabit of self- 
 correction strengthened by requiring children to look over the 
 work before the teacher does, once for omission of words ; 
 again, for correct use of punctuation and capitals ; and a third 
 time for correct spelling. 
 
 WRITTEN. 
 
 ( Note : — Written work in the second grade does not begin 
 until the second half of the year. Only one-fifth of the langu ige 
 time is given to written work.) 
 
46 SECOND GRADE 
 
 I. Aims* 
 
 To have the written work grow naturally out of the oral 
 work through copying the improved sentences which were 
 prepared by teacher and pupil together in the oral period. 
 
 To teach the few simple technicalities involved in putting 
 the oral work into written form. 
 
 To develop power to write correctly several related sen- 
 tences on a given topic, without the teacher's co-operation, but 
 always under her supervision. 
 
 To develop the power of thinking out the sentence be- 
 fore writing it. 
 
 IL Lines of Work. 
 
 i. SENTENCES. 
 
 a. Copying from the blackboard, the sentences prepared 
 with the teacher's co-operation during the oral period. 
 
 b. Writing the same from dictation, each child comparing 
 his finished product with the teacher's correct copy on the board. 
 
 c. Writing on the blackboard several related sentences. 
 These may be on a suggested subject, or original. They should, 
 be read by the writer, and the listening class should be trained 
 to comment on the interesting quality, and notice if the arrange- 
 ment is good. 
 
 The writer should explain his use of punctuation marks 
 somewhat as follows : 
 
 *'I have a little kitten. Her name is Tricks. Would you like 
 to see her?" 
 
 "I is always written as a capital when it is alone. There is 
 a period after the first sentence, because it tells something. Her 
 begins with a capital letter, because it is the first word in the 
 sentence. Tricks begins with a capital letter, because it is the 
 name of the kitten. There is a period after Tricks, because the 
 sentence tells something. Would begins with a capital letter, be- 
 cause it is the first word of the sentence. There is a question 
 mark after the sentence, because it asks a question." 
 
 d. Writing occasionally from dictation a few sentences tO' 
 test the grasp of technical points. 
 
SECOND GRADE 
 
 47 
 
 e. Writing occasionally the reproduction of a brief story,, 
 as a test of the pupils' grasp of the points of the story in their 
 logical sequence. 
 
 III. Suggested Topics For Sentence Writing - . 
 
 These will be found grouped under Section II in the outline 
 for oral composition in this grade. 
 
 IV. Technicalities. 
 
 i. Capitals. Beginning sentences, names of persons, of 
 places, days of the week, months of the year, the name of the 
 school, the letters I and O. 
 
 2. Period. At the close of the telling sentence. After 
 the abbreviations Mr., Mrs., St. 
 
 3. Question mark at the close of a question sentence. 
 
 4. Punctuation marks used in the writing of the pupil's 
 name and address, as learned through the alphabet card work 
 during the first year and the first half of the second year. 
 
 V. Words For Special Spelling Drill. 
 
 Note : — Re-read the chapter on "The Misspelling of Com- 
 mon Words" in the Preface. 
 
 again 
 
 knew 
 
 any 
 
 know 
 
 asked 
 
 leaving 
 
 buy 
 
 loving 
 
 can't 
 
 making 
 
 coming 
 
 many 
 
 cried 
 
 much 
 
 does 
 
 near 
 
 don't 
 
 off 
 
 dropped 
 
 once 
 
 drowned 
 
 only 
 
 fairy 
 
 running 
 
 first 
 
 school 
 
 goes 
 
 shining 
 
 having 
 
 some 
 
 heard 
 
 sure 
 
 higher 
 
 taking 
 
 their 
 
 there 
 
 they 
 
 too 
 
 tried 
 
 using 
 
 very 
 
 want 
 
 went 
 
 when 
 
 where 
 
 which 
 
 whole 
 
 whose 
 
 won't 
 
 write 
 
4 g SECOND GRADE 
 
 VI. Second Year Standards. 
 
 The following groups of sentences are printed here to 
 indicate about the sort of "written composition" the ordinary 
 child should be able to write at the end of the second year. 
 Some second grade pupils will be capable of writing longer and 
 better ones. A few will not be able to write as well as the 
 printed standards require. The majority of the pupils, how- 
 ever, should, if given a subject they feel like writing about, 
 be able to produce three or four sentences, somewhat like the 
 ones printed below. They should be able to do this with a 
 fair degree of facility, and with no assistance from the teacher 
 except what is derived from the oral preparation. The sen- 
 tences should show some sense of sequence, and the desire to 
 be interesting. They should be invariably correct in the matter 
 of capitals and ending marks. The pupil's power should always 
 be measured by the first writing, not by a corrected and re- 
 written copy. 
 
 Mabel's Teddy Bear is brown. 
 He has black eyes. 
 They are always open. 
 He wears a pink bow. 
 
 We saw a hand organ this morning. 
 A monkey was sitting on it. 
 He held out a red cap. 
 I put a cent in it. 
 
 My name is 
 
 I live at street. 
 
 I go to the school. 
 
 The principal's name is 
 
 My teacher's name is Miss 
 
 We went to the circus. 
 We saw some pretty horses. 
 The clowns made us all laugh. 
 
 This is a rainy day. 
 
 We can't go out at recess. 
 
 We will play games in the school room. 
 
 We saw the moon last night. 
 It looked like a boat. 
 It sailed in the blue sky. 
 
SECOND GRADE ,g 
 
 1 cut a big Christmas Tree out of green paper. 
 I cut some little candles out of red paper. 
 I put them on the tree. 
 
 Our school begins at half past eight. 
 
 I always get there early. 
 
 We do not like to have children late. 
 
 When the bell for fire drill rings, we stop work. 
 We leave the room quickly. 
 We do not talk or play. 
 
 Mary had a birthday, 
 Her mother gave her a ring. 
 It has a blue stone. 
 It fits her third finger. 
 
 VIL Comments and Cautions. 
 
 Keep the sentences simple. If you do, "and" and "but" 
 and "so" will not have a chance to get rooted in the child's 
 written language. It is bad enough to have to deal with them 
 in his oral language. 
 
 The amount of writing in the second grade should be small. 
 There is no gain in urging children to write much before their 
 experience in writing is sufficient to save them from a multitude 
 of errors. 
 
 Encourage free expression in the writing. Praise every 
 sign of originality. By being too critical of his written sen- 
 tences you may kill the pupil's desire to write at all. 
 
^o THIRD GRADE 
 
 THIRD GRADE. 
 ORAL. 
 
 (Four-fifths of the language time in the third grade i? 
 given to oral work.) 
 
 I. Aims. 
 
 To secure more orderly talking than in previous grades ; 
 to keep to the point ; to tell things in the right order of time 
 and event. 
 
 To teach children to think a sentence through before 
 speaking it. 
 
 To form the habit of speaking every word distinctly, of 
 making one's self heard, of using a natural tone of voice. 
 
 To train the pupils to be good listeners. 
 
 II. Suggested Sources. 
 
 HOME LIFE. 
 
 Topics bearing upon helpfulness at home, and in all 
 relations with playmates, younger children, the old and feeble, 
 animals; matters of personal appearance and conduct. 
 
 SCHOOL LIFE. 
 
 Discussion in simple terms of the necessity and value of 
 co-operating with others ; developing a class pride, a school 
 spirit ; helpfulness to teacher shown by promptness, obedience, 
 care of school property within and without the building, good 
 manners, courtesy to visitors. 
 
 COMMUNITY LIFE. 
 
 The development of civic pride ; ways of helping the 
 street, fire and health departments ; ways of preventing accidents 
 on the street, on street cars ; ways of preventing quarreling at 
 play ; how to be a good neighbor ; behavior in public places. 
 
 NATURE LIFE. 
 
 Observation of seasonal changes in nature, bird and animal 
 
THIRD GRADE qi 
 
 life. The teacher who loves nature and knows intimately her 
 work, or who will set herself to learn a little of it, has an 
 exhaustless store of subjects for oral language, even though 
 her pupils live in the most populous tenement district of a 
 mill city. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Saturday good times; Sunday walks at different seasons; 
 holidays ; description of toys ; of pets ; games played at home,' 
 at school, indoors, out of doors; the policeman, fireman, post- 
 man and their work ; the milkman, grocer, butcher, shoemaker, 
 carpenter, and their work; directions for making something, 
 for playing a game; short stories for reproduction; pictures 
 (choose those that suggest a story rather than those that sug- 
 gest description of object seen). 
 
 III. Suggestions as to Use of the Material in Section II. 
 
 i. To develop from a single topic several different 
 groups of interesting sentences arranged in good order. 
 
 Illustration : — 
 
 "The Fun That Spring Days Bring." 
 (Sentences contributed by the children.) 
 Flowers are gathered in the meadow by girls. 
 Girls play hop-scotch. 
 Boys fly kites and play marbles. 
 Sometimes boys go fishing. 
 Every boy plays ball. 
 
 Showing variety and good order in the arrangement 
 of the above sentences, made by individual pupils : 
 
 No. i. 
 What fun we have in Spring ! 
 Girls jump rope. 
 Boys fly kites and play marbles. 
 
 No. 2. 
 How glad I am it is Spring! 
 Little girls play hop-scotch. 
 Every boy plays ball. 
 
52 THIRD GRADE 
 
 No. 3. 
 Oh ! How nice Spring is ! 
 Little girls gather flowers in the meadows. 
 Boys go fishing. 
 
 2. To improve the quality of the sentence through 
 imitation of a model given by the teacher. 
 
 Teacher's Model. 
 
 The First Snowstorm. 
 What a stormy day! The snow is piling up in drifts. It 
 comes in at the windows. I have to play in the house. 
 
 Child's Imitation. 
 
 A Winter Day. 
 (Modeled on the above.) 
 What a cold day it is ! Jack Frost has come at last. He 
 sends the leaves flying. I have to play in the house, or he will 
 bite my nose. 
 
 Teacher's Model. 
 
 The Humming Bird. 
 Can you see that little bird? He is a little humming bird 
 and he comes to swing in my tree every morning. When the wind 
 blows and the branches sway, he is very happy. 
 
 Children's Imitations : 
 
 The Robin. 
 There is a little robin in the grass. How fat he is ! His 
 breast is bright red. He sings very sweetly every morning. 
 
 The Sparrow. 
 There is. a sparrow on the topmost bough. He is building 
 his nest. There he goes now to get some more straw. 
 
 The Canary. 
 At home we have a little canary. He has yellow and white 
 feathers. His feathers are very smooth. He sings very sweetly. 
 
 The Robin. 
 Look at that baby robin! His mother is teaching him to 
 fly. Look at him eating that worm ! 
 
THIRD GRADE 
 
 53 
 
 IV. Examples of Oral Composition. 
 
 It is to be understood that these examples are to be con- 
 sidered as illustrations only. They are not to be used as 
 material for memorizing or for imitating in too slavish a 
 fashion. They are put here as suggestions to teachers, and 
 not as subject matter for children. 
 
 HOME LIFE. 
 
 I help my mother set the table every day. First, I put on 
 the knives and forks. Next, I put on the spoons. Then I put the 
 chairs up to the table. 
 
 SCHOOL LIFE. 
 
 Yesterday we made penwipers. We cut three circles out 
 of cloth. The first one was small. The second was a little larger. 
 The third was the largest of all. We fastened the three circles 
 together with a brad. 
 
 COMMUNITY LIFE. 
 
 When I cross the street, I walk to the corner first. I look 
 both ways. If a car or an auto is coming, I wait until it passes. 
 
 My letter carrier wears a gray suit with brass buttons. He 
 carries a leather bag over his shoulder. In this bag he puts the 
 mail. He blows a whistle when he comes to the door. 
 
 SATURDAY GOOD TIMES. 
 
 Saturday morning, Annie and I played we were fairies. We 
 made wings of paper for our dresses. We had a good time. 
 
 HOLIDAYS. 
 
 Christmas Day comes in two weeks. I have a quarter to 
 spend for presents. I think I shall buy a glass for my mother to 
 put flowers in. 
 
 SOMETHING TO MAKE. 
 
 Do you know how to make a Jack-o-lantern ? Take a big 
 yellow pumpkin and cut off the top. Scoop out the inside clean. 
 Then cut the eyes, nose, and mouth. Put a lighted candle inside, 
 and put the top on again. 
 
 STORY. 
 
 The beautiful morning sunshine was streaming in at the 
 window. Little Herbert saw it shining on a chair. He thought 
 that if the sun was on it, no one could sit on it. He went for a 
 towel. He tried to wipe the sunsh'ne off the chair. He rubbed 
 and rubbed until he was tired and still the sunshine was there. 
 
54 THIRD GRADE 
 
 STORY TO BE FINISHED. 
 
 The Crow and The Pitcher. 
 
 I am so thirsty! I have had no water to drink for a long 
 time. If I do not find some water soon, I shall die. Ah, there 
 is a pitcher. Perhaps 
 
 PICTURES. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel lived in a hollow tree. They had five 
 little ones, who wore pretty gray coats. One day Jack Frost told 
 Papa Squirrel that he would bring snow soon. Mr. Squirrel hur- 
 ried home to tell the folks. He said they must gather plenty of 
 food for the winter. The little squirrels got great heaps of grain 
 and nuts in their home in the tree. Pretty soon down came the 
 snow, but the squirrels did not care, for they had a good warm 
 home and plenty to eat. 
 
 V. Errors of Speech. 
 
 The teacher should re-read the chapter on "Common 
 Errors of Speech" in the Appendix, and the notes under this 
 heading in the grades below and above her own. The grouping 
 is the same always: (i) verb errors, (2) pronoun errors, 
 (3) colloquialisms, (4) mispronunciations, but the teacher is 
 not to mention grammatical distinctions. Right use of language 
 comes from habit, not from knowledge of terms or rules. 
 Speech forms come to the child largely through the ear. 
 Repetition fixes the habit of speech, whether it be good or bad. 
 Speech is a matter of the spinal cord rather than of the mind. 
 When the child said /'Can I have a piece of pie?" "May I!" 
 corrected the mother. Then the child said, "May I have a 
 piece of pie?" and the mother answered, "Yes, you can." The 
 knowing mind said "may", the spinal cord said "can" ; therefore, 
 the tongue said "can". 
 
 The "language game" (see Appendix) is the most effective 
 method of getting the right forms to "sound right" to the 
 child. Use the games every day, but do not work a few of 
 them to death. When the "game" spirit wears off, half *ne 
 good is gone. 
 
THIRD GRADE 
 
 55 
 
 I done it. 
 
 I et the apple. 
 
 I seen him take it. 
 
 Leave him do it. 
 
 I ain't got no book. 
 
 He don't know. 
 
 Has John went yet ? 
 
 I seen it. 
 
 That ain't mine. 
 
 He never give me a pen. 
 
 My pencil is broke. 
 
 1 trun the core away. 
 
 She brnng it to school. 
 
 You was down there. 
 
 Here is yourn. 
 Me aunt is sick. 
 
 Him and me done it. 
 Them are mine. 
 
 I'm after doing my work. 
 
 Do like I did. 
 
 These kind are bad. 
 
 This is the boat what I went on. 
 
 Can I get a pen off him?' 
 
 I was to school. 
 
 I am all better. 
 
 I can't find it nowhere. 
 
 Sec what you're at. 
 
 My mother is worser. 
 
 The boy was almost drownded. 
 
 My teacher's name is Mrs .... 
 
 Be you a-goin' ? 
 ( '.inime a cent. 
 I was late, 'cause I went 
 to the store. 
 
 They was nobody to be seen. 
 
 I hurted me. 
 
 VI. Comments and Cautions. 
 
 The teacher should do as little talking as possible. 1 he 
 exercise is not to train her, but her pupils. 
 
 Get rid of the "stringy" sentence. 
 
 The oral language period is not for entertainment, but for 
 the training in language power. All children, therefore, should 
 take part, not merely the voluble children or those who are 
 naturally good talkers. 
 
 Never let the conversation drag aimlessly to no destination. 
 As soon as interest begins to fail, the topic has served its pur- 
 pose, and another should be taken. 
 
 It is of no use to say good things unless one speaks loud 
 enousrh to be heard. 
 
56 
 
 THIRD GRADE 
 
 Faultfinding and interruption to correct errors discourage. 
 Sympathy and patience bring improvement from the slowest. 
 
 Remember that it is not enough for a child to say another's 
 work is "good", "interesting", or "I like it". He must tell why. 
 Expect every child to listen attentively, that he may be able to 
 speak definitely of the work done. 
 
 Constant practice in oral expression in the lower grades 
 will make the correct formal expression on paper later 
 a comparatively easy task. For the child who has learned to 
 think clearly — and no one can talk intelligently without thinking 
 clearly — will find little difficulty in mastering the mechanical 
 art of putting that thought into writing. 
 
 Teach your children to drop the voice at the end of the 
 sentence. 
 
 WRITTEN. 
 
 (Only one-fifth of the language time in the third grade is 
 given to zvritten zvork.) 
 
 I. Aims, 
 
 To make the written work a natural outgrowth of the 
 oral work by having children copy sentences prepared by the 
 class and teacher in the previous oral lesson. 
 
 Using these sentences as models, to develop power to 
 produce original work on similar topics. 
 
 To develop power to write independently a few interesting 
 sentences on a given topic. 
 
 To make habitual the correct use of the technicalities 
 assigned to the grade. 
 
 II. Lines of Work. 
 
 Copying original sentences which have been written on the 
 blackboard by the teacher, after discussion and criticism by 
 class. No sentence should be thus written until it is found 
 
THIRD GRADE cy 
 
 to be well constructed. The group of sentences should next 
 be studied for improvement in order and arrangement. 
 
 Writing the same from dictation. Each child should learn 
 to correct his own paper by comparing it with the teacher's 
 correct copy on the blackboard. 
 
 Original, independent work should be done, based upon 
 the model worked out by class and teacher in co-operation. 
 
 Blackboard work should be done often, several children 
 being sent to the board at once to write a few connected sen- 
 tences on a given subject. There should be no formal prepara- 
 tion for this work by discussion and criticism as heretofore. 
 
 The direction should be : "Write about " In this way, 
 
 the responsibility for producing well-constructed and interesting 
 work lies wholly with the writer. Judgment may be formed as 
 to his possession of sentence feeling, connectives, and other 
 technicalities. Each should read his own production, giving 
 the reason for the use of each capital and punctuation mark. 
 
 Occasional exercises in dictation should be given for the 
 purpose of furnishing practice in the use of the required tech- 
 nical points, and for testing accuracy. In this work, children 
 should be trained to close concentration during dictation. A 
 sentence should be given but once. Repetition results in 
 inattention. 
 
 Occasional exercises should be given in reproducing stories 
 that children have found interesting in the oral period. Four 
 or five sentences should be the maximum requirement. Like 
 other written work in this grade, the first work in reproduction 
 should be copying the well-told story ; next, writing it from 
 dictation. During the last half of the year, there should 
 occasionally be independent writing of some short and simple 
 well-liked story. 
 
 III. Suggested Topics. 
 
 The topics for oral composition suggested for this grnde 
 are equally suitable for the written work. The teacher is 
 therefore referred to the second section of the oral outline for 
 this grade. 
 
58 
 
 THIRD GRADE 
 
 IV. Technicalities. 
 
 Capital letter beginning sentences, names of persons, of 
 places, days of the week, months of the year, the name of our 
 state, our city, of child's own school. 
 
 Period at the end of a telling sentence, after the abbrevia- 
 tions of names of days, of months ; after Mr., Mrs., St., Mass. 
 
 Question mark after questions. 
 
 Exclamation mark after exclamations. 
 
 V. Words For Special Spelling; Drill. 
 
 (The words in italics are repeated from the second grade 
 list.) 
 
 asked 
 
 making 
 
 went 
 
 buy 
 
 shining 
 
 when 
 
 coming 
 
 their 
 
 which 
 
 dropped 
 
 there 
 
 whose 
 
 fairy 
 
 they 
 
 write 
 
 heard 
 
 too 
 
 wrote 
 
 know 
 
 tried 
 
 
 afraid 
 
 February 
 
 quite 
 
 all right 
 
 forty 
 
 right 
 
 almost 
 
 friend 
 
 Saturday 
 
 already 
 
 great 
 
 speak 
 
 always 
 
 guess 
 
 though 
 
 beginning 
 
 its 
 
 together 
 
 busy 
 
 laughed 
 
 truly 
 
 children 
 
 lose 
 
 Tuesday 
 
 clothes 
 
 loose 
 
 until 
 
 color 
 
 money 
 
 Wednesday 
 
 doctor 
 
 month 
 
 whose 
 
 early 
 
 none 
 
 women 
 
 easy 
 
 often 
 
 would 
 
 enough 
 
 people 
 
 writing 
 
 father 
 
 please 
 
 
 "VI. Written Standards. 
 
 The following paragraphs are thought to represent a fair 
 ■standard of the kind and quality of written composition that 
 •should be expected of children at the end of the third grade. 
 
THIRD GRADE eg 
 
 They are all based upon topics which have been suggested as 
 practicable for this grade. No one of the paragraphs is more 
 than five sentences long. All of the sentences are simple 
 sentences. Every paragraph contains a bit of personal interest. 
 A few children in every class will be able to write longer 
 and better compositions than the standard for the grade represents. 
 They will be able to write longer sentences also. Gifted pupils 
 like these should not be restrained by the limitations of the 
 grade standard ; but they should be at all times held to strict 
 account in matters of correct writing. A few children, on the 
 other hand, will not be able to write as well as the standard. 
 But the majority of every grade class should at the end 
 of that year be able to write a paragraph of the character and 
 length of those printed here, composed of sentences gram- 
 matically complete, correctly capitalized and punctuated, and 
 free from misspelled words. They should be able to do this 
 without oral preparation. The first writing, it should be under- 
 stood, is the measure of the pupil's power. The corrected and 
 re-written copy is worthless as a standard of ability in written 
 composition. 
 
 HOME. 
 
 Mother has been away a whole week. It is very lonesome 
 without her. I wish she would come home. 
 
 This is Mother's birthday. After breakfast we gave her our 
 presents. Mine was a pretty bookmark. I made it in school. 
 
 SCHOOL. 
 
 Yesterday afternoon we played school. We all wanted to 
 be the teacher. So we agreed to draw lots. I was the lucky one. 
 
 Last Friday we had a spelling match. I spelled "beginning" 
 wrong. I shall never spell it wrong again. 
 
 Sometimes my teacher lets me stay after school. I clean 
 the blackboard for her. I put the books in a neat pile. 
 
 I think music is the best of all our school lessons. I like to 
 sing the song about the rabbit. The Christmas songs are good, 
 too. Sometimes I sing alone. 
 
60 THIRD GRADE 
 
 IN GENERAL. 
 
 I am a paper kite. I fly high above the earth. I can see the 
 whole city. The houses look very small. The people seem to be 
 one inch high. 
 
 One day last week I saw something bright lying in the 
 gutter. It looked just like a nickel. I stopped and picked it up. 
 It was only a tin tag. 
 
 This is how we play "Squirrel". First our teacher chooses 
 a squirrel. Then we all put our heads on the desk. Next, the 
 squirrel taps some child on the head. That child tries to catch 
 the squirrel. 
 
 REPRODUCTION. (There should be little of this.) 
 
 Some birds were sick. A cat went to see them. He called 
 himself a doctor. But the birds would not let him in. They did 
 not want that kind of a doctor. 
 
 VIL Comments and Cautions. 
 
 In each grade stress is put upon a few things. The teacher 
 should make sure that these are positively and usefully known.. 
 Succeeding teachers must not let this knowledge and habit lapse. 
 
 The fact that in the third grade the sentences are for the 
 first time cast into the form of a paragraph, instead of each 
 new sentence starting on a new line will tend to produce "the 
 child's error" (see foreword on "The Sentence") upon the part 
 of children who have not yet the "sentence habit" strongly 
 established. Teachers in this grade must, therefore, make a 
 good deal of this fundamental thing in writing English. The 
 sentence idea, or sentence sense, is not an easy one for some 
 children to get. Children must be taught early to distinguish 
 between a sentence and a group of words that is not a sentence. 
 There is no need of lugging in grammar to teach the distinction. 
 It is the thought that tells the child what a sentence is, not 
 subjects and predicates and other grammatical considerations. 
 
 Pupils cannot too early be taught the habit of looking 
 over all written work before handing it in, in order to correct 
 their mistakes. 
 
THIRD GRADE 6l 
 
 Keep the written sentences simple. Try to get a little 
 variety in the beginnings of sentences, but don't expect 100 
 much. Study the standards for the grade, and be satisfied if 
 your pupils turn off sentences as good as those. 
 
62 FOURTH GRADE 
 
 FOURTH GRADE. 
 ORAL. 
 
 (Three-fourths of the language time in the fourth grade is- 
 given to oral work.) 
 
 I. Aims. 
 
 Training in speaking on one's feet cannot begin too early 
 in the school course. The pupil's first efforts will be crude, 
 and perhaps discouraging ; but it is only through continued 
 practice under patient and sympathetic direction that the pupil 
 can reach the ultimate state of ease and fluency. 
 
 In this grade aim especially to secure clearness of thought. 
 Try to teach them to distinguish between the unimportant and 
 the important. Teach children to think over what they have 
 to say before you let them talk. 
 
 Teach your pupils these fundamental things : 
 (i) To open their mouths when they speak. 
 
 (2) To speak in a clear, low voice — low in the sense of 
 being in the natural register of the child's voice, not 
 in the high-pitched "school room" tone — yet loud 
 enough to be heard distinctly in all parts of the room. 
 
 (3) To sound final g's, t's, d's and th's, and to take pains 
 to pronounce correctly such words as "children", 
 "this afternoon", etc. 
 
 II. Examples of Oral Composition. 
 
 These examples of children's oral composition are intended 
 to indicate about the kind of work fourth grade pupils should 
 be able to do at the end of the year. The range of topics that 
 may be used is as wide and as varied as are children's ex- 
 periences. From their life at home, on the streets, in school; 
 from their sports, amusements, duties, tasks ; from the things 
 they have seen and heard and felt and done; from the things 
 they have read and the things they imagine: from all these 
 sources may be drawn an infinite variety of interesting material.. 
 
FOURTH GRADE 
 
 6? 
 
 The topics suggested for written composition in this course of 
 study are just as good for oral composition as for written 
 composition. Nor is the oral treatment so very much different 
 in this grade from the treatment of the written topic. It is 
 composition in just as true a sense as the written work, except 
 that it is not put down on paper. Many times it is well to 
 have a pupil write out any exceptionally interesting oral com- 
 position that he has contributed. 
 
 It is to be borne in mind that the power of children in 
 oral composition runs considerably ahead of their power in 
 written composition. In the examples a good many of ';he 
 sentences are longer and more complex than in the written 
 standards for this grade, which are still composed largely of 
 simple sentences. Teachers must, of course, not allow the use 
 of the longer sentence in the oral work if the pupils do not use 
 it well. Bring everybody down to the use of simple sentences 
 whose sentences incline toward looseness and awkwardness,, 
 until he can be trusted with the longer sentence. At the same 
 time do not hold to the simple sentences pupils who naturally 
 use the longer sentence well. 
 
 It is a more difficult thing to judge the excellence of 
 spoken language than that of written language, because the 
 impression of the former is so fleeting and so intangible. The 
 teacher must, therefore, train herself to keep one ear open to 
 the style of the pupil speaking, while the other is engaged in 
 listening to the things he has to say. If every teacher could 
 once or twice a year have a stenographer take down the oral 
 compositions of her class and put them into type for her exactly 
 as they were spoken, it would help her teaching of oral language 
 more than anything else in the world. 
 
 All of the following examples were taken from the actual 
 oral work of children in the fourth grade. 
 
 A Pet of Mine. 
 I have a pet hen that I like very much. I call her the little 
 red hen. At morning I feed and water her. At noon I run home 
 as fast as I can to feed her. Every night before I go into the 
 house, I look to see if she is safe. At night when I am in bed, 
 I am thinking if she is safe. 
 
64 FOURTH GRADE 
 
 My Garden. 
 Last year, I had four beds of morning glories. I watered 
 them every night. One night I saw some buds. I was glad then. 
 So I put some strings up to my bedroom window. In two months 
 they were up to the window. They made a sort of tent. Some of 
 them were pink, and some were blue. They were very pretty. 
 
 My Report Card. 
 When I got home the first month with my card, my mother 
 sighed. She said if I had "Whispers" again on my card, she 
 would come up to school. I did not want her to, so I never 
 whispered very much after that. Now it says "Good" every 
 month. Last month, it said "Good work in reading and language". 
 
 Saturday Good Times. 
 On Saturday mornings, a girl and I go to a gymnasium 
 class on Lawrence Street. We do folk dances and play games. 
 Some of the folk dances we do are "The Shoemaker" and "See- 
 Saw". We march and play different games. We have much fun. 
 We begin about nine o'clock and stop at ten o'clock. There is 
 another class with older girls in it. 
 
 III. Common Errors of Speech. 
 
 The teacher who has studied the lists of errors in the 
 grades below the fourth (as she ought to do) will find many of 
 them repeated here. As is shown in the introduction to the 
 Chapter on "The Language Game" (see Appendix) the errors 
 children make in their speech, like their errors in spelling, are 
 really few. A dozen verbs, for example, are responsible for 
 one-sixth of all the errors made in their speech. There is only 
 one way to overcome these errors and that is to expose children 
 for some period every day to the sound of right form. They 
 must say it and hear it, over and over again. Correct speech in 
 young children is a matter of the ear. Don't waste time in 
 trying to show why this form is right and the other wrong. 
 Use the language game freely. These games should be short 
 and lively. They should never run over five minutes. They 
 should be so devised as to give every pupil a chance to use as 
 many times as possible the correct form chosen for the day's 
 practice. 
 
FOURTH GRADE 
 
 65 
 
 I done it. 
 
 He come back. 
 
 We drawed a bird's nest. 
 
 I brung it to him. 
 
 There was about seven boys there. 
 
 He trun it to me. 
 
 We have saw them. 
 
 I seen it. 
 
 Where was you? 
 
 My book is tore. 
 
 It ain't so. 
 
 My pencil is broke. 
 
 You hadn't ought to do it. 
 
 That don't make me laugh. 
 
 Look what I done to that paper. 
 
 Them are easy. 
 
 He can't run as fast as me. 
 
 They are wrong theirselves. 
 Me and Frank will go. 
 
 Can I get a book off Mary? 
 My sister learned me to sew. 
 Where shall I bring them to? 
 The baby got sick on us. 
 Sing it like John does. 
 Can I have a drink? 
 
 John stayed at home. 
 
 She sits in back of me. 
 
 Leave me do it. 
 
 Where are you at? 
 
 She never does nothin'. 
 
 He be's always whispering '_o me. 
 
 Ketch the ball! 
 Lemme have that. 
 I c'n git it. 
 
 They was an old man there. 
 Are they any school? 
 
 IV. Comments and Cautions. 
 
 The child learns to talk correctly by talking under careful 
 direction, just as he learns to read by reading, and to write by 
 writing. There must, therefore, be daily systematic, persistent, 
 and patient training in talking in every grade from ihe first 
 to the eighth. 
 
 If in the arithmetic class a child should say, "2x3 are 5", 
 would his teacher say "6" and pass on ? Then why when a boy 
 says, "We come home last night", should she say sotto voce, 
 "We came home," and let the matter pass at that. The boy is 
 so intent upon his thought that he repeats what his teacher says 
 without mental reaction, and unless something be done later to 
 rescue the correction from that indefinite region known as the 
 sub-consciousness, the teacher may as well save her breath. If 
 she does not wish to interrupt him while he is talking, she 
 certainly must take time at the first free moment to go back to 
 
66 FOURTH GRADE 
 
 his error and require a correction. If the mistake is one he 
 habitually makes, some scheme must be devised to keep him 
 conscious and watchful, for nothing short of eternal vigilance 
 will eradicate the evil. 
 
 The teacher must do everything she can to take away the 
 self-consciousness of her pupils. She should be quick to find 
 signs of power as well as evidence of weakness. 
 
 Time should not be wasted in aimless, haphazard talk. 
 
 Look out for the "rising inflection". 
 
 WRITTEN, 
 
 (One-fourth of the language time in the fourth grade is given 
 to written ivork.) 
 
 I. Aims* 
 
 The various lines of work suggested for the third year 
 should be carried forward. The paragraphs, upon topics mainly 
 drawn from the children's experience, should grow slightly in 
 length, and give evidence of a little growth in the sequence and 
 connection of the sentences. The quantity of the writing must 
 not be permitted to increase at the expense of correctness. It 
 is better to have a paragraph of four or five good sentences,, 
 than one of twice the number carelessly done. Remember that 
 the written work forms but a very small part of the language 
 work of this grade, and be sure that the oral work is never 
 slighted to gain time for perfecting the written work. 
 
 Here for the first time the letter is introduced, and is to 
 hold a very important place in the written work of the. grade. 
 A discussion of letter writing in school and a number of models 
 of letters will be found under the proper section of the year's 
 work. 
 
 Children should all the time increase in their mastery of 
 the mechanics of written work and in their capacity to criticise 
 their own composition. 
 
FOURTH GRADE 
 
 67 
 
 II. Lines of Work. 
 
 1. SENTENCES. 
 
 Much care should be taken during the year to hammer 
 home "the sentence idea", which is so fundamental in writing. 
 Either it is a difficult thing for some children to get. or we 
 have neglected to teach it, or we have taught it poorly, for a 
 great many children in the upper grammar grades do not seem 
 to know when one sentence ends and the next one begins. Or, 
 if they know, they have not yet "got the habit" of beginning 
 their sentences with a capital and ending them with a period. 
 
 There are many ways of driving home the sentence idea : 
 
 (a) Let the teacher give orally groups of words, some 
 which make sentences, and others not. After each 
 one, let pupils tell whether it is a sentence or not, 
 giving the reason. 
 
 (b) Children may be required to make sentences out of 
 the non-sentence groups. 
 
 (c) The same exercises may be written on the board. 
 
 (d) Let the children give groups of words, and let other 
 children tell whether the given group is a sentence or 
 not, always giving reasons. 
 
 (e) The children may be required to complete the non- 
 sentence group. 
 
 It is both unnecessary and unwise to confuse fourth grade 
 children by introducing the grammar of the sentence. The idea 
 of the completed thought is all-sufficient. 
 
 2. PARAGRAPH COMPOSITIONS. 
 
 The standard paragraphs printed in the Third Grade out- 
 line suggest the kind of original composition work that should 
 be continued this year. Keep the sentences simple and the para- 
 graphs short. There are fifty paragraph topics printed in the outline 
 for the fourth grade ; but teachers are at liberty to choose from 
 the subjects of any grade for this purpose. The list of subjects 
 is meant to be suggestive, not prescriptive. Teachers are wel- 
 come to use their own subjects, so long as they are concrete, 
 personal, and brief. 
 
68 FOURTH GRADE 
 
 Fourth grade paragraphs should be free from the mis- 
 spelling of the common words upon which special drill has been 
 given from the first grade up. 
 
 3. LETTERS. 
 
 The letter is the only kind of composition that every child 
 will have to write after he leaves school. For that reason the 
 school should give much practice in letter writing. If the 
 children who leave the grammar school cannot write a correct 
 letter, our work in written composition is a joke. 
 
 In the interests of teaching economy, one form of the 
 friendly letter, one form of the business letter, and one form 
 for addressing the envelope are printed in an Appendix to this 
 course, which are to be used by all teachers in all the grades, 
 regardless of their personal preferences or predilections. After 
 the children leave school, they may modify this form as much 
 as they like, but while they are in school they will be required 
 to conform to the school standard. 
 
 The form, or arrangement, of the letter is a matter wholly 
 separate from the writing of the letter itself. It is a matter of 
 pure technique and should be taken up as such. Thus, a letter 
 should be placed on the board, or hektographed, and the 
 attention of the pupils called to the mechanical placing of the 
 several parts. After sufficient study, the letter should be copied 
 by the pupils. The letters that the teacher puts before the 
 children for study of the form, should be models of letter 
 writing as well as of correctness of mechanical arrangement. 
 The body of the letters so used should be short (not more than 
 five or six sentences in the fourth grade), but they ought to 
 read like real letters from real children. You will find some 
 letters of this sort later on in this section. Nothing should be 
 said about the body of these letters at this time, but the children 
 will catch the spirit of them without comment from the teacher. 
 Later on, these same letters, or others, should be dictated to 
 test the children's knowledge of the form. All models presented 
 children should conform strictly in arrangement and punctuation 
 to the standard letter form adopted for this course of study. 
 
FOURTH GRADE 
 
 69 
 
 When the form has been well taught, the work of writing 
 original letters should begin. It is the almost universal ex- 
 perience of teachers that the letters which children write in 
 school are painfully unnatural and uninteresting. That is 
 because they have usually no real letter to answer, no real 
 person to write to, and no reason or desire at that particular 
 time to write any kind of a letter to anybody. It is a horrible 
 example of the necessity of "having to say something" instead 
 of the satisfaction of "having something to say". So far as 
 it is possible, therefore, the letters written in school should be 
 real letters to real people. Otherwise, the motive is wanting, 
 and the letters, while they may be even uncomfortably correct 
 in respect to form, are likely to be painfully artificial and dull. 
 In order to get the effect of realism, teachers should therefore 
 contrive some scheme of actual correspondence. The resource- 
 ful teacher does not need to be told how. 
 
 Only friendly letters are undertaken in the fourth grade. 
 These should contain one paragraph only. They should have 
 to do with interesting occurrences at home, in school, 0:1 
 holidays, or special occasions ; with invitations to share good 
 times ; with appreciation of pleasures shared ; with sympathy 
 for sickness or mishaps. The following letters may be helpful 
 to teachers as illustrations of the sort of letters fourth grade 
 children ought to be able to write at the end of the school year. 
 The full letter form is not carried out in these illustrations. 
 
 Dear Mary, 
 
 I am taking piano lessons. I practise one hour every day. 
 I can play a waltz. Come over Saturday and hear it. 
 Your cousin. 
 
 Dear John, 
 
 A week from to-day will he my birthday. I am to have a 
 party at four o'clock. I wish you would come. 
 Your friend, 
 
 Fred. 
 
70 FOURTH GRADE 
 
 Dear Fred, 
 
 I cannot be at your birthday party because I am going away 
 with Father. I shall not be home again for a week. You know 
 how sorry I am to miss the fun. 
 
 Your friend, 
 
 John. 
 
 Dear Uncle, 
 
 You are so far away, I am afraid you didn't hear the good 
 news. Both Mary and I are to be promoted to Grade V. Isn't 
 that fine? Father and Mother are as happy as we are. 
 Your loving nephew, 
 
 Dear Mrs. Brown, 
 
 I had a very happy birthday. It was very good of you to 
 •send me that book of fairy tales. I have read three stories already. 
 Affectionately yours, 
 
 My dear Miss Brown, 
 
 I have been very sick for the last month, and the doctor 
 says I cannot go back to school for quite a while. I am very 
 lonely sometimes. Will you please send me the names of some 
 good books? I should like something like "Little Women". 
 Your affectionate pupil, 
 
 Dear Aunt, 
 
 Our teacher has just taught us to write a letter. I shall 
 write one to you every week. We have learned the first verse of 
 "America". I know every word of it. Would you like to see 
 bow well I can write it? 
 
 Your loving niece, 
 
 Dear Frank, 
 
 John told us this morning that you are in bed with a heavy 
 cold. I am very sorry. I hope the doctor is not making you 
 take medicine. I hate to take medicine. We began a new story 
 in class yesterday. The name is "The Blue Bird". Perhaps your 
 mother will get it and read it to you. I know you will like it. 
 Your friend, 
 
FOURTH GRADE y 1 
 
 4. TESTING ACCURACY AND KNOWLEDGE OF FORM 
 BY DICTATION, COPYING, AND THE SHORT 
 REPRODUCTION. 
 
 In the grades below the fourth, copying and dictation serve 
 a useful purpose as aids in introducing new lines of work to 
 children, and they are to some extent useful in a similar way 
 in this grade. This is particularly true in teaching the letter 
 form, which, so far as its arrangement upon paper goes, is a 
 purely mechanical matter. 
 
 Generally, however, copying and dictation are more valuable 
 for testing than for teaching. They should be used with 
 moderation, and they should be used right. Children at the end 
 of the fourth grade should be able to write from dictation at 
 the rate of about eleven words (averaging 3^2 letters a word) 
 a minute. This is according to the standard devised by Mr. S. 
 A. Courtis. Dictation that is too slow is as bad as dictation 
 i.hat is too fast. 
 
 Reproduction differs only slightly from dictation and is 
 mainly useful for testing a pupil's mastery in the mechanics. 
 There is some originality involved, but memory is the chief 
 factor. Only very short stories or incidents, with interest and 
 point to them, should be used. It is an exercise to be used 
 sparingly. 
 
 III. Topics for Original Paragraphs. 
 
 These topics are given here only to suggest the kind 
 of topic that children are more likely to succeed with in their 
 paragraph writing. Teachers do not have to use these partic- 
 ular ones. But they must be sure to select subjects that are 
 concrete, personal, and brief. 
 
 The Best Coast in Lawrence. 
 
 My Ride on a Roller Coaster. 
 
 My First Swimming Lesson. 
 
 How I Taught a Trick to My Dog. 
 
 How to Spin a Top. 
 
 Rabbit Ways. 
 
 Fun at Beach. 
 
 A Tree Mishap. 
 
72 FOURTH GRADE 
 
 What I Like About the School. 
 
 Taking Home My Monthly Report Card. 
 The Game I Like Best for Indoors Recess. 
 How We Make a Sewing Apron. 
 A Picture in My School Room. 
 Why I Was Late for School. 
 How I Help My Teacher. 
 
 A Summer Morning at the Playground on the Common. 
 
 A Walk Along the Banks of the Merrimack. 
 
 A Trip to Den Rock. 
 
 A Trip to the Polls on Election Day. 
 
 A Trip to the Pumping Station. 
 
 How Lawrence Looks from the Water Tower. 
 
 The Merrimack Falls in Winter. 
 
 The View from the Canoe Club. 
 
 The Flower Beds on the Common. 
 
 Cheated at the Circus. 
 
 Keeping Track of Johnny at the Picnic. 
 
 What I Liked Best at the Pet Shop. 
 
 The Baby at Our House. 
 
 The Kind of Dog I Like. 
 
 The Best Time I Ever Had. 
 
 The Story I Like Best. 
 
 Spending a Nickel. 
 
 My Fall on the Ice. 
 
 How We Surprised Mother. 
 
 When the Fire Alarm Rings. 
 
 My Home in Italy. 
 
 On the Steamer From Hamburg. 
 
 What I Saw on My Way to School. 
 
 What I Did on Saturday. 
 
 What I Am Going to be. 
 
 A Fireman I Know. 
 
 A Fire I Saw. 
 
 Lawrence's Prettiest Street. 
 
 In the Forest With Hiawatha. 
 
 What "Safety First" Means. 
 
 How to Build a Fire. 
 
 How I Would Direct a Stranger to the Public Library. 
 
 What I Liked Best in the Circus Parade. 
 
 IV, Technicalities. 
 
 There are very few written technicalities required in this 
 course of study. Those that are required should be thoroughly 
 taught, and plenty of opportunity given to use them in writing. 
 
FOURTH GRADE 
 
 73 
 
 3- 
 
 4- 
 
 5- 
 
 Capitals. Beginning names of holidays, of local geo- 
 graphical names (Tower Hill). First word of every 
 line of poetry. 
 
 Punctuation marks used in the writing of dates, letter 
 headings, etc. 
 
 Abbreviations. Those used in letter writing. 
 Contractions. Isn't, didn't, wasn't, I've, won't, can't, 
 wouldn't and others occurring in common use. 
 Letter form. Arrangement on paper ; indentation of 
 first line. 
 
 V. Words for Special Spelling Drill. 
 
 ( Review words are printed in italics.) 
 
 all right 
 
 February 
 
 afraid 
 
 forty 
 
 almost 
 
 friend 
 
 already 
 
 guess 
 
 always 
 
 having 
 
 beginning 
 
 heard 
 
 busy 
 
 laughed 
 
 color 
 
 lose 
 
 clothes 
 
 much 
 
 coming 
 
 people 
 
 doctor 
 
 quiet 
 
 dropped 
 
 quite 
 
 early 
 
 Saturday 
 
 enough 
 
 
 aloud 
 
 honest 
 
 also 
 
 hoping 
 
 among 
 
 hour 
 
 because 
 
 instead 
 
 becoming 
 
 just 
 
 believe 
 
 learned 
 
 bicycle 
 
 losing 
 
 built 
 
 meant 
 
 business 
 
 minute 
 
 carriage 
 
 ninety 
 
 caught 
 
 often 
 
 choose 
 
 perhaps 
 
 early 
 
 pieces 
 
 easily 
 
 pleasant 
 
 fourth 
 
 quietly 
 
 shining 
 
 their 
 
 there 
 
 they 
 
 too 
 
 tried 
 
 truly 
 
 until 
 
 using 
 
 which 
 
 whose 
 
 women 
 
 writing 
 
 ready 
 
 really 
 
 receive 
 
 rough 
 
 spoonful 
 
 stopped 
 
 straight 
 
 tired 
 
 touched 
 
 through 
 
 used to 
 
 weather 
 
 wholly 
 
 written 
 
74 FOURTH GRADE 
 
 VI. Comments and Cautions. 
 
 To teach one thing for which the pupil is ever after 
 responsible, then another thing plus the first, then a third, plus 
 the first and second, is the surest way of getting somewhere. 
 
 It is very important that the pupil read his composition 
 through before handing it in. By this means he will discover 
 many common errors, such as omissions of words, misspelled 
 words, incorrect punctuation, and the repetition of the same 
 word. He should be taught to cultivate the power of imagining 
 Tiow it will sound when read aloud. 
 
 The fourth grade teacher should begin to transfer the 
 burden of criticism from her own shoulders to those of her 
 pupils. But the criticism of one another's work by the pupils 
 must always be controlled and directed by the teacher. Children 
 must be made to understand 
 
 (i) That criticism deals with merits as well as faults. 
 
 (2) That criticism of one another's work should always be 
 given to help one another. 
 
 (3) That the pupil must regard his fellow-critics as his 
 friends, not his enemies. 
 
 In all oral and written composition, the blackboard is most 
 useful. By means of it the oral expression is vizualized, making 
 pleasing features more emphatic, while faulty ones are recorded, 
 to be changed again and again until satisfactory. 
 
 The co-operative work of teacher and pupil is made more 
 impressive if the blackboard is brought into use in working out 
 improvement in the sequence of thought, the sentence structure, 
 and the choice of words. The teacher may copy upon it 
 compositions which are to be criticised by the class ; or she 
 may use it for presenting a model composition for the pupils to 
 follow in their own oral or written constructions. 
 
 One of the best ways to interest and to improve a class, 
 particularly the poorly equipped or the indifferent members, is 
 "to have pupils write their own compositions on the board, in- 
 
FOURTH GRADE -- 
 
 stead of on paper. This method can be used with great profit 
 in a grade as low as the third, and is increasingly valuable in 
 higher grades. Here the writer is certain of an audience, and 
 equally certain of an immediate estimate of his effort. He 
 desires the appreciation of this audience, and wishes to avoid 
 any unfavorable criticism from it. Therefore, it is natural for 
 him to look over his work, correcting his own blunders before 
 reading it aloud to the class for their comments. Such exer- 
 cises are certain to develop the appreciation of the difference 
 between orderly presentation of events and aimless wandering, 
 to deepen the feeling for correct structure, and the knowledge 
 of the right use of the capitals and the elementary punctuation 
 marks. 
 
 VII. Written Standards. 
 
 At the end of the year, a fourth grade pupil of average 
 ability ought to be able without oral preparation or other 
 assistance from the teacher, to write a paragraph as good as 
 the one here printed. Some pupils will be found able to 
 write a much better one. A few will not be able to write as 
 well as the example calls for. But at least seventy-five per- 
 cent, of the class ought to be able to reach the standard of 
 ability represented by it. 
 
 My Flower Bed. 
 I made my first flower garden last June. One day some 
 boys ran across the bed, and stepped on one of my plants. The 
 next day a dog scratched up some more. So I put a fence around 
 what was left. After that the flowers had a chance to grow. 
 
76 FIFTH GRADE 
 
 FIFTH GRADE. 
 ORAL. 
 
 (Two-thirds of the language time in the fifth grade is given 
 
 to oral work.) 
 
 I. Aims. 
 
 By the time children have reached the fifth grade the 
 following things should have become "bred in the bone" : 
 (i) That it is a desirable thing to be able to speak good 
 English. 
 
 (2) That one should speak slowly and distinctly and with 
 sufficient "carry" to the voice to make oneself heard 
 in all parts of the class room. 
 
 (3) That while talking one should stand erect and away 
 from the desk. 
 
 (4) That the short sentence is better suited to the majority 
 of young speakers than the long sentence. 
 
 (5) That a pupil in his talking, just as in his writing, 
 should learn to pick out some one particular point in a 
 given subject, and stick to it. 
 
 During the fifth year keep the following, points constantly 
 before the pupil. They will help a great deal. 
 Stand up straight. 
 Speak distinctly. 
 Watch your English. 
 Use short sentences. 
 Stick to the point. 
 Make it interesting. 
 
 Arouse the conscience of your pupils toward clean-cut 
 enunciation by giving frequent drills like those suggested in the 
 Appendix. It does not make much difference what drills are 
 used, or what words are practiced upon. The value of such 
 drills lies in the suggestion which work of this sort sets going 
 
FIFTH GRADE j- 
 
 in the pupil's mind. Poor enunciation is, for the most part, a 
 matter of ignorance. Children don't know any better. They 
 speak as they hear others around them speak. When it isn't 
 due to ignorance, it is due to laziness. Some children and many 
 grown people who know better are too lazy to enunciate their 
 words clearly. It is too much bother. Most children, though, 
 if taken early enough and shown the difference between distinct 
 utterance and the slouchy manner of speech which so many of 
 them, boys particularly, are prone to adopt, will respond to die 
 teacher's efforts to set up for her class a high standard of 
 enunciation. It . i not enough, however, for teachers to talk 
 about good enunciation. The only way for children to learn to 
 enunciate clearly is to have plenty of practice in clear enun- 
 ciation. This is where the drill is useful — not because of the 
 particular sounds the drill contains, but because it often 
 awakens in children their first realization of what slipshod 
 habits of enunciation they have grown into without knowing it. 
 If children could learn no more than to sound their final con- 
 sonants, their whole speech would be transformed. This much, 
 at least, should be achieved in the fifth grade. 
 
 II. Examples of Oral Composition. 
 
 These examples suggest something of the style of oral 
 composition to be aimed for in the fifth grade. They show 
 some advance over the selections representing fourth grade oral 
 composition, but are still simple and childlike. Because the 
 power of children to talk is usually several years ahead of their 
 ability to write, the use of the longer sentence is perfectly 
 natural to many children in this grade and should not be 
 discouraged except in the case of those who do not use it well. 
 By the longer sentence is not meant a series of statements 
 strung together by "and". The kind that is perfectly allowable 
 is the kind that appears in the examples below. Oblige children 
 who are careless in their sentence structure to talk in simple 
 sentences until you can trust them to express themselves in 
 larger units. 
 
 There is no dearth of material for oral composition. Some 
 
78 FIFTH GRADE 
 
 of this material was suggested in the third grade outline. The 
 subjects for written composition make perfectly good subjects 
 for oral composition. The range is as wide as the interests 
 and the experiences of the children. They must be shown, 
 however, how to handle their simple themes in such a way as 
 to make them interesting to those who listen to them. This is 
 not an easy thing to do, but it affords opportunity for the best 
 kind of training. The chief thing to impress upon children is 
 that they must not talk about a string of things in their oral 
 compositions, but that they must select some single point, and, 
 as it were, "elaborate" it. The examples which follow show 
 commendable intent to do this very thing. They were taken, 
 from the actual work of fifth grade children. 
 
 My Pet Bird. 
 I have a little bird named Dick. When I open the door of 
 his cage he flies out about the room. He eats from my hands. 
 If my mother does not put water in his dish he sits in it and 
 keeps chirping till she pays attention to him. Then she puts the 
 water in, and he takes his bath. After he is all dry, and has fixed 
 his feathers, he begins to sing, and makes the morning bright. 
 
 My Guinea Hens. 
 We have two guinea hens. Their names are Jack and Jill. 
 Jack has a white breast and the rest of him is black and white. 
 Jill has white wings, and her body is gray and. white. These 
 guinea hens' combs are different from hens' combs. They are 
 very hard, and hurt your hand to touch them. Jill is very nervous, 
 but Jack is very brave. If he sees his sister in trouble he will 
 run to help her. We keep these guinea hens, because if anyone 
 should come to steal the hens, the guinea hens would set up a loud 
 racket. They also scare hawks. 
 
 How I Help At Home. 
 One day when I was tired of playing with my dolls, I asked 
 my mother if I could help her. She said I might wash and iron 
 my hair ribbons. I put the irons on the stove, and washed the 
 ribbons. While I was ironing them, the iron fell from the holder 
 onto the rug and burned it. I was afraid to pick it up, so my 
 mother had to leave her work and do it for me. The first ribbon 
 I ironed I scorched, because the iron was too hot. The next I 
 scorched also. My mother then did the rest. She said I was 
 more bother than help. 
 
FIFTH GRADE yg 
 
 III. Common Errors of Speech. 
 
 The errors listed for correction in the fifth grade are 
 practically the same as those assigned to the grades below. The 
 kinds of errors common to the speech of children arc few in 
 number. But unfortunately they persist from infanc.) to old 
 age. It is not possible to assign certain errors to certain grades, 
 and let it go at that. The same old errors must be attacked all 
 along the line. 
 
 The grouping into: (i) verb errors, (2) pronoun errors. 
 (3) colloquialisms, and (4) mispronunciations has no significance 
 beyond serving to remind the teacher (see Chapter on "Common 
 Errors of Speech" in the Appendix) that verb errors form the 
 largest proportion of spoken errors, with the other three groups 
 of errors following in order of frequency. That chapter in the 
 Appendix should be studied carefully by the teacher who desires 
 to make an effectual campaign against these errors. She should 
 on no account be led into the mistake of discussing with her 
 pupils this technical classification of errors, or the worse 
 mistake of discussing in this grade the grammatical principles 
 violated in these errors. The study of grammar does not begin 
 until the seventh grade, and it is not to be brought into any 
 earlier grade, no matter in what innocent disguise. Grammar 
 never caused any child to speak correct English. There is only 
 one way to teach right forms, and that is to have children say 
 them often enough to make the right form sound right. 
 
 Our piano is broke. He done it. 
 
 He hadn't ought to go. It ain't no use. 
 
 You was'nt on the corner. He seen more than you did. 
 
 I come to Lawrence last week. He don't know his lesson. 
 
 I've wrote my spelling long ago. Has the bell rang? 
 
 She is laying down. 
 
 Them words are too hard. I can write better than him. 
 
 Me and you will go. 
 
So FIFTH GRADE 
 
 I can copy it off the board. He was to his house. 
 
 They learn you to cook at that school. She reads good. 
 
 Take your place in back of him. They left him go. 
 
 My mother took sick. Look where you're at. 
 
 It won't hurt nothin'. The answer what you got is right. 
 
 I brought it home to my mother. 
 
 The candy is et up. Wait till I git me cap. 
 
 They was a new book here. Watch me ketch it ! 
 
 Her ran ahead a'me. May I borry a knife? 
 Look at 'em ! 
 
 IV. Comments and Cautions. 
 
 It is quite remarkable to rind how few complete sentences, 
 each containing subject, predicate, and suitable modifiers, are 
 exchanged between the ordinary teacher and her pupils. 
 Presumably in every school directions, questions, and explana- 
 tions, are given; yet if teachers were to review their own 
 language, they would probably be astonished to find how few 
 sentences composed of well-chosen words they speak in a day. 
 A sustained conversation between teacher and pupils is very 
 unusual, frequently an unheard-of thing. Questions that are 
 asked are generally elliptical in form, often they are expressed 
 in single words, while the answers are very generally sent back 
 by the children in single words or phrases, noL-in frequently by 
 the monosyllables "yes" and "no". 
 
 The shorthand report of eighteen recitations in a New York 
 school showed that out of 750 answers to the teachers' questions 
 420 were one zvord answers, and 100 more were phrase answers. 
 What about the answers in your room? 
 
 Insist that when the child talks he stand erect and free 
 from his desk and that whenever practicable he face the persons 
 to whom he talks, as in ordinary conversation. This physical 
 control of his body will, when it becomes a habit, help him to 
 control his thinking and his talking. 
 
 Teach children the habit of dropping the voice at periods. 
 
FIFTH GRADF. g x 
 
 Correct oral English may be realized in the language lesson 
 only to be lost in the other periods of the daily program, unless 
 the teacher carefully guards against any lapses by her pupils 
 from the correct form until such time as right habits of ex- 
 pression impel them to use the correct forms without any 
 conscious effort on their part. Pupils should learn that during 
 the entire school day their statements should be grammatical 
 and complete. The teacher should seldom supply part of the 
 pupil's answer or statement. 
 
 The daily training in speaking before the class will in time 
 enable the child to express his thoughts in the presence of 
 others without nervous fear or a feeling of embarrassment. 
 The results at first will often seem crude and unsatisfactory 
 to the mature mind of the teacher ; but if finally the child 
 acquires a composed, pleasing, and forcible manner of speaking, 
 the end is well worth the effort. If the issue is only self- 
 control and self -poise the time spent in the acquirement of these 
 is time well expended. 
 
 At the close of every recitation, or at least once a day, 
 serious mistakes in English should be definitely and forcibly 
 corrected. If this is done in a mechanical way, in the same 
 manner day after day, little will be accomplished. On the 
 other hand, if the work is carried on with spirit and intelligence, 
 much may be done for the pupil's English. 
 
 WRITTEN. 
 
 (One-third of the language time in the fifth grade is given 
 to tvritten work.) 
 
 I. Aims. 
 
 The aim of the fifth grade written work is to extend and 
 strengthen the lines of work laid down in the previous grade 
 
 Sentence work should still be restricted to the simple form 
 of the sentence, except in the case of individuals who naturally 
 write the longer sentence well. Those who do not should be 
 
82 FIFTH GRADE 
 
 pinned down to the short sentence until they show themselves 
 able to use the larger freedom judiciously. Below the seventh 
 grade the child who has not natural language gifts loses himself 
 in a complex or a compound sentence. All we need to get in 
 the grammar school is clear and complete sentences, properly 
 capitalized and punctuated. We cannot expect to get ease and 
 grace. Those who go to the high school will get there all the 
 style they want. Those who do not go to the high school will 
 not need much English style to meet their writing needs in 
 life. If any of them should later discover the need of style they 
 will get it for themselves. 
 
 The original paragraph work should show some increase in 
 length, and the beginnings of skill in the art of elaborating, so 
 to speak, the simple themes upon which the pupils write. The 
 first thing to learn in this art is to focus the thought upon some 
 single phase of the theme selected and make the whole para- 
 graph turn upon that. This is not an easy art to acquire, and 
 it cannot be acquired in a single year. The fifth grade teacher 
 must, however, make a beginning at it. The lack of training 
 in this respect is very noticeable in children's written themes. 
 They write a dozen different things in a single paragraph, and 
 consequently write nothing interesting about any one of the 
 dozen things. The subject of "How I Help at Home" becomes 
 a catalogue of duties from building the fire in the morning to 
 washing the dishes after supper. Now, starting the fire in the 
 morning is a theme full of possibilities for a composition para- 
 graph, and washing the supper dishes is a theme not without 
 opportunities for interesting (and possibly humorous) comment. 
 Yet the great majority of children's compositions are of the 
 catalogue type rather than of the selective type. Fifth 
 grade children are capable of grasping this "single phase" 
 thought, and of working it out little by little in their themes, 
 if they have the right kind of help and suggestion from the 
 teacher. Nothing is more helpful in this direction than the 
 presentation by the teacher of many model paragraphs illustrat- 
 ing how the elaboration of a single idea is carried out by a 
 master hand. Much can be done toward this end in the oral 
 composition work. Indeed, it is here that the foundation of 
 
FIFTH GRADE 
 
 83 
 
 written work is laid. If an oral composition is allowed to 
 ramble over a variety of things, touching none of them inter- 
 estingly, the written paragraphs will be no better in this respect. 
 The same process holds good for both oral and written themes : 
 Choose a subject that is concrete, personal, and brief. Then 
 narrow it by selecting some single phase of the subject which 
 gives most promise to yield the maximum of interest or enter- 
 tainment or instruction. Then have the pupil work this up for 
 all he is worth. 
 
 The letter should form an important part of the written 
 work. The standard form printed in an Appendix should be 
 the unvarying standard in all grades. Follow the pattern of 
 the model letters given for the fourth grade. These may be 
 lengthened slightly, but should not be more than one paragraph 
 in length. They should be of an informal, intimate type, 
 simple, sincere, and jolly — such as real children would write to 
 one another or to grown people of whom they are fond. 
 Insist, however, that the form of the letter be strictly like the 
 standard. 
 
 Dictation, copying, and reproduction exercises should be 
 occasionally used. But these, it must be remembered, are of 
 chief value as testing exercises, not as teaching exercises. 
 They should never be given unless there's a reason. Fifth 
 grade children should write dictation at the rate of about 16 
 ordinary words a minute. Copying is a good test of attention 
 and accuracy, but care must be taken that right habits of copying 
 are taught. If wrong habits are taught, it is a harm rather 
 than a help. Copying should always be timed. It is impossible 
 otherwise to measure the power of the different pupils. Once 
 this power is known by actual testing, only those who are found 
 to be slow and inaccurate should be given further practice. 
 The others would be better occupied in other kinds of language 
 work. Do not give much reproduction work. Its value is 
 about on a par with dictation. It contains a slight element of 
 originality, but its chief value is in testing mechanics of writing. 
 It should be sparingly used. 
 
 In the mastery of the mechanics and in the power to 
 criticize their own work fifth graders should show steady growth. 
 
84 FIFTH GRADE 
 
 II. Lines of Work. 
 
 i. Sentences. 
 
 2. Original paragraphs. 
 
 3. Letters. 
 
 4. Testing Accuracy and Knowledge of Form by Dictation, 
 Copying, and the Short Reproduction. 
 
 III. Topics for Original Paragraphs. 
 
 The First Coast of the Winter. 
 
 How We Made a Snow Lady. 
 
 Playing School with My Dolls. 
 
 Our Neighborhood Circus. 
 
 An Afternoon at Canobie Lake. 
 
 An Automobile Ride to Lowell. 
 
 Coasting on Cold Spring Hill. 
 
 A Hot Afternoon at the Wading Pool. 
 
 Swimming Excitement. 
 
 Our School Lawn. 
 
 The School Yard at Recess. 
 
 Our Christmas Entertainment. 
 
 The Boy (Girl) in Front of Me. 
 
 Listening for the "No Session" Bell. 
 
 Filing Out at 11 :iS. 
 
 How to Use the School Telephone. 
 
 How to Keep a Neat Desk. 
 
 My First Day in School After a Month's Absence. 
 
 A Horse Race at Rockingham Fair. 
 
 The Common in Winter (Summer). 
 
 The Shattuck Flagstaff. 
 
 The Water Tower. 
 
 Along Essex Street on a Wet Day. 
 
 My Grandfather's Barn. 
 
 Our Garden After the First Frost. 
 
 Helping in My Father's Shop. 
 
 The Best Exhibit in Our Church Fair. 
 
 The Spicket (Merrimack, Shawsheen) River. 
 
 Packing the Lunch Basket for a Day at Canobie. 
 
 A Visit to the Engine House at 7 :45 p. m. 
 
FIFTH GRADE 
 
 85 
 
 My Lucky Day. 
 
 The Gypsies at Cold Spring. 
 
 Fun at the Street Fountain. 
 
 The Boy Choir. 
 
 What I Saw When Carrying Dinners. 
 
 A Frightened Animal at the Circus Parade. 
 
 Picking Shells at Salisbury. 
 
 Burning the Leaves. 
 
 A Ride With the Grocer. 
 
 Cleaning My Yard. 
 
 The Street I Live on. 
 
 A Picture in Our House. 
 
 Why I'd Like to be a Letter Carrier. 
 
 Why I Favor a Central Bridge. 
 
 How I Help to Keep the City Clean. 
 
 How I Care for Our Horse. 
 
 How I Help at Home on Saturday. 
 
 What I am Going to do for Christmas. 
 
 How to Entertain a Number of Small Children on a Rainy Afternoon. 
 
 How to Make a Whirligig. 
 
 A Man I Would Like to Have for an Uncle. 
 
 IV. Technicalities. 
 
 The technicalities in this course are purposely kept few 
 and simple. Teachers are not to teach anything that is not 
 here indicated. Many of the "old favorites", like the "comma 
 in a series" and the comma after the name of a person 
 addressed, have been intentionally omitted. You will notice, 
 also, that quotation marks have not yet appeared. 
 
 If children use direct quotation in their written work, and 
 leave out the marks, or use them wrong, don't worry about it. 
 Let it pass unnoticed. There are many more important things 
 to worry about. Quotation marks will be taught later on in the 
 course, but only a very little time will be spent upon them. 
 The use of quotation marks in the kind of writing that our 
 boys and girls will be called upon to do after they leave school 
 is very rare. It is an unimportant item upon which the school 
 has been wasting much precious time. Teach thoroughly the 
 few things you are told to teach, and leave the rest to some- 
 body else. 
 
 1. Capitals. Titles of compositions; addressing envelopes. 
 
 2. Punctuation marks required in letter forms, including 
 the address on the envelope. 
 
 3. Apostrophe in possessive singular. 
 
86 
 
 FIFTH GRADE 
 
 V, Words for Special Spelling: Drill. 
 
 (Review words are printed in italics.) 
 
 'all right 
 
 easily 
 
 their 
 
 ■all ready 
 
 enough 
 
 there 
 
 beginning 
 
 friend 
 
 tired 
 
 believe 
 
 heard 
 
 too 
 
 busy 
 
 know 
 
 truly 
 
 business 
 
 laughed 
 
 until 
 
 ■carriage 
 
 minute 
 
 weather 
 
 ■caught 
 
 people 
 
 women 
 
 'Color 
 
 quiet 
 
 written 
 
 'Coming 
 
 receive 
 
 
 dropped 
 
 studied 
 
 
 answered 
 
 except 
 
 trouble 
 
 cities 
 
 handkerchief 
 
 umbrella 
 
 cousin 
 
 neighbor 
 
 useful 
 
 cotton 
 
 oblige 
 
 village 
 
 different 
 
 pleasant 
 
 whom 
 
 drawer 
 
 replied 
 
 woolen 
 
 either 
 
 straight 
 
 
 VI. Comments and Cautions. 
 
 Pupils should continue the habit of criticizing and correcting 
 their own written work before handing it in. What they can 
 do for themselves the teacher should not do for them. 
 
 Select two or three special points that you wish to impress, 
 and examine the papers rapidly, with those points alone in view. 
 Concentrate your efforts on those points for a time, then select 
 other points and transfer the emphasis of your attention to 
 them. The papers can be examined more easily and rapidly 
 and, therefore, the exercises may be given more frequently 
 when but few points are in mind. 
 
 It is a good plan to have on the board or on the child's 
 desk a list of points on which he needs to exercise care, such 
 as spelling, capitals, periods, commas, grammar, etc. Let him 
 look at this list before he begins, and correct his work according 
 to it when he is through. The list can be varied to suit the 
 special needs of each grade, or a list can be made for each 
 
FIFTH GRADE 
 
 87 
 
 child that will suggest his personal difficulties. Insist on each 
 pupil doing his best in every exercise, and refuse to accept 
 careless work. Hand such work back, without correction, and 
 require the pupil to do it again. 
 
 VII. Written Standards. 
 
 The following paragraph was selected to represent the 
 composition ability that it seems reasonable to expect from the 
 child of average power at the end of his fifth year. It is not 
 an easy thing to select from children's compositions of each 
 grade a single paragraph that shall indicate the desired amount 
 of growth from year to year. While the standard paragraphs 
 used in this course of study have not been graded according to 
 any scientific scale, each has been chosen after careful 
 deliberation. Considering the fact that the schools have hitherto 
 had no standards of any kind in oral or written composition, 
 it would hardly be sensible to be over-finical in this first 
 attempt to establish some. It is believed that they are adequate 
 for the purpose of indicating to teachers in a concrete way the 
 sort of original composition the general run of fifth grade 
 children should be capable of turning off at the end of the y^ar. 
 There will be found in every class, of course, a wide variation 
 of this ability. For some the standard will be too low. A few 
 may not be quite able to reach it. But so long as seventy-five 
 percent, of the pupils can write an original paragraph as good 
 as the example here presented, the teacher will have done her 
 share of the work in written language. 
 
 Flying a Kite. 
 I have one of those kites that you get at Morehouse's. Last 
 evening my brother and I went out on the Extension to fly it. 
 There was a splendid breeze blowing. The kite flew as high as 
 the telephone pole. It would have gone higher if the string had 
 been longer. I am going to buy another ball of twine, and try 
 it again this afternoon. So if you see a kite away up in the sky 
 vou will know it is mine. 
 
88 SIXTH GRADE 
 
 SIXTH GRADE. 
 ORAL. 
 
 (Two-thirds of the language time of the sixth grade is given 
 
 to oral zvork.) 
 
 I. Aims. 
 
 The aim of the sixth year should be to accustom children, 
 by much practice, to talk freely upon their feet and to be 
 careful of their English and clear in their utterance. This 
 carefulness in their speech should characterize all their recita- 
 tions. The habit of good oral expression can never be 
 established through the medium of the language period alone. 
 Effort must be constant through the whole day's work. 
 
 It is a good idea to have occasionally some short recitations 
 or declamations of a simple character. 
 
 Things for the pupil to remember : 
 
 Know what you want to say. 
 Say it in your own words. 
 Say it to some one. 
 Say it as well as you know how. 
 
 Things for the teacher to remember : 
 Make everybody talk. 
 Don't criticise too much. 
 Make corrections stick. 
 Make the class profit as well as the pupil talking. 
 
 Work constantly for the improvement of the enunciation 
 of your pupils and the development of a speaking voice that 
 without forcing or the use of an unnatural register can be heard 
 easily all over the room. Have frequent drills in articulation 
 like those suggested in the Appendix to this Course of Study. 
 Strive to get clear enunciation in all recitations. It is of little 
 
SIXTH GRADE 
 
 89 
 
 use to work for ten or fifteen minutes a week on enunciation 
 drills, and accept mumbling and half audible talk from pupils, 
 during the rest of the time. The teacher who goes in for 
 clean-cut enunciation will get it. We fail to get a good many 
 things from our pupils because we are not earnest enough in 
 our effort to get them. It is not to be expected, of course, 
 that children to whom English is an acquired language will 
 speak as perfectly, so far as enunciation goes, as native born 
 children. That difficulty is always to be taken into consideration 
 in judging the results of a teacher's work in oral language. 
 No sixth grade class in Lawrence, however, is made up ex- 
 clusively of children of non-English-speaking parents ; so tnat 
 there are always children enough in every room whose speech 
 may be taken, in all fairness, as samples of the persistence and 
 success of the teacher's efforts to secure distinct enunciation. 
 
 II. Examples of Oral Composition. 
 
 The following paragraphs represent a reasonable standard 
 for sixth grade oral compositions. Please note carefully wiiat 
 was said in connection with oral composition in the fourth and 
 fifth grades. The sixth grade work in oral composition is but 
 a continuation of the work there discussed in considerable 
 detail. Be especially alert to the need of training children to 
 select a single phase of a subject and make the most of it 
 they can in a single paragraph, instead of spreading themselves 
 out thin over all the things that may occur to them to say upon 
 the subject. For instance, take these two themes: 
 
 How I Help My Mother. 
 Every day when I get up in the morning I eat my breakfast, 
 I wash the dishes, do the beds, and sweep the floor. Then I get 
 ready to go to school. In the afternoon I just wash the dishes, 
 and my sister sweeps the floor. When I come home from school, 
 I do all the errands. Later I go out to play. When it is five 
 o'clock I go home and stay home. At six o'clock we have supper. 
 When we are all over with supper, I gather the dishes from the 
 table. When I am done, I start to wash the dishes. When I have 
 finished I say my prayers and go to bed. 
 
90 SIXTH GRADE 
 
 How I Help My Mother. 
 My share of the housework is washing the dishes. There 
 are six of us at home. So you see we have a great many dishes 
 to wash. I have never tried to reckon it, but I am sure I wash a 
 million in a year. My sister wipes them, and we both wish we 
 lived in the times when people ate out of the same dish with' their 
 fingers. We play this game to keep up our courage. We try to do 
 them quicker every week. Last week we gained four minutes. 
 We didn't break any dishes either. 
 
 These were taken from actual compositions of school 
 children. The first is a schedule of a day of housework, upon 
 no detail of which the author dwelt long enough to arouse our 
 interest or to put anything of herself into her experience. It 
 is mechanically correct, and that is all. The author of the other 
 paragraph chose a single item of the day's work and worked 
 into it considerable interesting detail and genuine childlike 
 comment. It is this treatment of the paragraph that the sixth 
 grade should strive for. It is not to be expected that every 
 pupil in a class will be able to produce a paragraph that will be 
 as interestingly worked out as the second example above. But 
 all should work for it and a fair proportion of the class should 
 really get it. 
 
 Polly's x\ntics. 
 On rainy afternoons I play with my poll parrot. His greatest 
 delight is to play with a spoon. He slips it back and forth through 
 a ring on his cage. Sometimes it drops on the floor. Then it is 
 fun to see him run to get it as fast as his stubby little legs will 
 carry him. If a piece of cracker is put into his cage, lickety-cut 
 he goes in after it. A poll parrot is a very comical creature. 
 
 Fun at the Camp. 
 Last vacation my father said I could invite four boys up to 
 our camp at Corbett's Pond. We lived in a tent, and slept out, and 
 got our own meals. We went fishing and hunting, but had the 
 most fun in swimming. While we were in the water, we played 
 hall and had races. In the races I always came out fifth. 
 
 The Christmas Tree on the Common. 
 At Christmas time there was a large tree on the Common. 
 It was illuminated with electric lights. On the top, there was a 
 revolving light which lit up almost the whole Common. The tree 
 was covered with all kinds of ornaments for Christmas. Near by 
 was a large sign, on which were the words "Peace on earth, good 
 will to men". 
 
SIXTH GRADE gj 
 
 III. Errors of Speech. 
 
 The use of correct English is a habit. This thought has 
 been emphasized over and over again in this course of study. 
 The speech of children and of grown people is full of errors 
 because they have not formed the habit of talking correctly. 
 There is a big difference between knowing hoid to do a thing 
 and doing it. It is not mere knowledge, but habit that we want. 
 Pupils may know the right form and out of two forms presented 
 to them by the teacher, one right and one wrong, invariably 
 name the right form. Yet in the very next recitation they will 
 use the very form which they condemned a moment before. 
 Every teacher has probably heard the old story of Johnny and 
 the past participle of the verb "to go"; how the teacher 
 punished him for repeated offences by requiring him to scay 
 after school and write "I have gone" fifty times; how upon 
 the completion of the task (in the absence of his teacher from 
 the room) he wrote at the bottom of his paper: "Dear A I i s > 
 
 , I have wrote "I have gone" 50 times and I have 
 
 went home." Habits of years cannot be rooted up in a minute. 
 To get a habit thoroughly rooted in a child's life takes careful 
 drill and constant repetition. The errors of speech cannot be 
 corrected by writing the correct form. It must be said and 
 heard over and over again, until the ear becomes accustomed 
 to it and accepts it in place of the wrong form which it had 
 before accepted as the right one. 
 
 The school has to fight perpetually the language habits of 
 the street, and children are in school less than half of every 
 year. But it is not fair to measure the power of the school 
 to overcome bad language environment out of school by 
 comparing the length of time spent in school with that spent 
 upon the street. By reason of its opportunity to rivet attention 
 and create vivid impressions, an hour in school, if used to the 
 fullest extent, far outweighs an hour upon the street. Every- 
 body knows the miracles the school performs upon the little 
 foreign children who enter it. But miracles are not wrought 
 incidentally. Children cannot be taught to forsake bad habits 
 by occasionally correcting their use of ain'ts and wa'n'ts. The 
 
92 
 
 SIXTH GRADE 
 
 effort must be organized, regular, and persistent. The errors, 
 after all, are not many, and it is wonderful how the avoidance 
 of a few of them affects our opinion of a person's education. 
 The knowledge of a dozen forms of correct expression will 
 give a person an appearance of being well educated, even though 
 his schooling was very limited. The man who never says ain't 
 almost qualifies as an educated man. 
 
 Excellent material for drill for upper grades may be found 
 in "Applied English Grammar", a text-book written a dozen 
 years ago by Edwin H. Lewis, published by the Macmillan 
 Company, and in a new book, "Language Games for All 
 Grades", by Miss Alhambra Q. Deming of Winona, Minn., 
 published by the Beckley-Cardy Company of Chicago. 
 
 The ice had broke. 
 
 The picture is tore. 
 
 I seen him when he done it. 
 
 I come to school early this morning. 
 
 There was two new boys in the yard. 
 
 He done his work first. 
 You wasn't there. 
 'Taint no good. 
 She don't want them. 
 
 Hand me them books. 
 
 Who is going, you or me? 
 It was me that lent the book. 
 
 John took my knife off me. 
 
 She's just after coming. 
 
 My teacher learned me to write. 
 
 It sort of makes you afraid. 
 
 Leave me see. 
 
 I have a book what has no cover. 
 
 Mary talked like he did. 
 
 Can I speak to her? 
 
 Here, look't. 
 
 He was to church. 
 
 It went fine. 
 
 Where are you at? 
 
 We won't have no school to-day. 
 
 I hat ter go home. 
 
 The water pipe is all froze up. 
 
 What are you doin'? 
 
 Are they any school? 
 
 I'm a thinkin' a goin' to-night. 
 
 Gimme a book. 
 
 Kin' you ketch the ball? 
 
 Give it to 'em ! 
 
 My mudder gave me the book. 
 
 IV. Comments and Cautions. 
 
 Remember that those who talk well will write well. Writers 
 may not be speakers, but really good speakers can always write. 
 
SIXTH GRADE 
 
 93 
 
 The teacher must insist that the pupil give her only his 
 hest English in all recitations, and that clear expression become 
 more and more general as the year advances. 
 
 In a recent survey of classroom teaching in the city of 
 New York, short-hand reports of eighteen recitations showed 
 that all the pupils together used about 5000 words, while their 
 teachers used about 19000 words. Who. does the most talking 
 in your room? 
 
 Helpful criticisms by the pupils should be encouraged, but 
 aimless, trite remarks such as "I liked what you said" and 
 "I think you had a good choice of words" should be discouraged. 
 Impress upon the pupils that only such criticism should be 
 offered as will call attention to an excellence, or enable the one 
 who is speaking to do better in his next effort. Avoid also 
 the danger of allowing the criticism to stop with minor correc- 
 tions and evident slips. 
 
 Pupils, .also, should be taught by degrees to make definite, 
 systematic, and kindly suggestions on both the matter presented 
 by the pupil talking and his manner of presenting it, and should 
 be led to discover what the secret is of the effectiveness of the 
 pupils who talk well. 
 
 WRITTEN. 
 
 (One-third of the langauge time of the sixth grade is given 
 to written work.) 
 
 I. Aims. 
 
 At the end of the sixth year children should be able : 
 
 (1) To express in a short paragraph, clearly and with 
 some sense of order, such ideas as are entirely familiar 
 to them. 
 
 (2) To use sentences grammatically complete, correctly 
 begun and ended. 
 
94 SIXTH GRADE 
 
 (3) To write and mail a simple letter to a friend, or a 
 brief business letter, using the standard forms adopted 
 in this course of study. 
 
 (4) To spell correctly the words which they commonly write, 
 and upon which they have been specially drilled. 
 
 (5) To know how to use the few technicalities taught. 
 
 (6) To criticize intelligently their own work, and correct 
 their own errors. 
 
 The facility and the accuracy called for by the above 
 standards of ability are not, of course, expected to be the same 
 in degree as the facility and accuracy expected at the end of 
 the eighth grade. They are the same in kind, but in a more 
 limited field. It is difficult to define accurately just what that 
 field is, and it is possible to over-rate the ability of twelve- 
 year-old children. The things that are called for here they 
 must be able to do by themselves, without any help or 
 cautioning from the teacher. Often the quality of work done 
 by children when wholly unassisted is disappointing to teachers, 
 because the constant "boosting" they give children in the every 
 day recitation misleads teachers as to the real power that pupils 
 themselves possess and which they can draw upon unaided. 
 Sixth grade children should, however, at the end of the year 
 show considerable mastery of simple language facts and know 
 how to use them accurately. It is assumed that in the process 
 by which this mastery has been gained there will have been 
 simultaneously developed some useful language habits and. 
 tendencies. Some of these are : 
 
 (1) The tendency to select a subject for original composi- 
 tion that can be interestingly developed in a single 
 paragraph. 
 
 (2) The tendency to think over the subject and to do some 
 little mental arrangement of ideas. 
 
 (3) The tendency to avoid too much repetition of the 
 same words and the same sentence form. 
 
 (4) The habit of neatness in writing the composition. 
 
 (5) The habit of looking over all written work to correct 
 mistakes. 
 
SIXTH GRADE q- 
 
 The sentences should still be kept simple. At the same 
 time pupils who show themselves capable of using complex 
 and compound sentences in their written paragraphs without 
 getting snarled up in them should be allowed considerable liberty 
 in this respect. The teacher must remember, however, that the 
 longer a child allows a sentence to run, the greater the danger 
 that it will run away with him. Just as soon, then, as a pupil 
 shows by his careless handling of the long sentence that he 
 is enjoying more liberty than is good for him, he should be 
 brought back to the starting line. 
 
 It would be a waste of time to attempt to get all of the 
 pupils in this grade, or even a majority of them, to use the longer 
 sentence. It is not worth while to work for it in this grade. 
 Even if it could be successfully done, it would be done at too 
 great an expense. There are other things more important at 
 this stage. If your class leaves the sixth grade able to write 
 good short sentences, invariably begun with a capital letter and 
 ended with a period or whatever other closing mark is required, 
 you may thank your stars. Have no regrets that the course 
 did not permit you to teach a maturer style. You have given 
 them the thing most needful. If they remain in school, they 
 will get later on what you perhaps would like to give them now. 
 If they leave school early to go to work, you have given them 
 the best possible thing — the habit of writing short, simple, clear, 
 and correct sentences. 
 
 The one step in advance which the sixth grade teacher 
 may take, with respect to sentence structure, is to train her 
 pupils to use a greater variety of ways of beginning their 
 sentences. They should be taught to avoid repetition of the 
 same word or phrase. They may be also taught to practice 
 some of the simpler principles of inversion, so as to make the 
 important things in the sentence come first, or last. The 
 conventional order of subject, verb, and object in the sentence 
 tends toward monotony. If this stereotyped order can be varied 
 occasionally, the monotony of a succession of short sentences 
 will be relieved and the whole effect of the sentence structure 
 improved. It is not expected that all the pupils will develop 
 much skill in this kind of work if it is attempted ; but it is 
 
96 SIXTH GRADE 
 
 better to spend effort upon improving the simple sentence than 
 to try to get all the children to use complex and compound 
 sentences, which is more than can be expected of sixth grade 
 children. 
 
 In the sixth grade the friendly letter is to continue an 
 important feature of the written work, and the business letter 
 is to be introduced. The standard form for the business letter 
 is printed in an Appendix. This, like the form of the friendly 
 letter, is the one adopted by the Bureau of Measurement and 
 Efficiency of the Boston public schools. The body of the 
 business letter should be confined to a few sentences. The chief 
 thing to teach is the form. The friendly letter ought to show 
 some growth in interest and ease, in proportion as the children 
 gain in the power to elaborate a single theme interestingly in 
 their own original paragraph work. 
 
 IL Lines of work. 
 
 ( i ) Sentences. 
 
 (2) Paragraphs. 
 
 (3) Friendly Letters. 
 
 (4) Business Letters. 
 
 (5) Teaching letter forms, mechanics, and accuracy by 
 occasional exercises in dictation, copying, and short 
 reproduction. 
 
 (Sixth grade children should write from dictation at 
 the rate of about 19 words a minute, according to the 
 Courtis scale.) 
 
 III. Topics for Original Paragraphs. 
 
 Study the suggestions given for the fourth and fifth 
 grades, under both oral and written composition. 
 
 My New Flexible. 
 
 Coasting Down Providence Street. 
 
 Fishing Through the Ice at Valpey's. 
 
 A Potato Roast. 
 
 The Merrimack at 4.30 When Skating is Good. 
 
 The Fun a Bicycle Brings. 
 
 A Hallowe'en Scare. 
 
SIXTH GRADE 
 
 The School Team. 
 
 Our New Victrola. 
 
 Doing Palmer Writing. 
 
 The Snow Rally at Recess. 
 
 Our Slide on the Common. 
 
 Why I Had to Stay after School. 
 
 Why I Like the Reading Period. 
 
 Why I Like Our Sewing Lesson. 
 
 The Song I Like Best. 
 
 How I Explained My Tardiness to the Principal. 
 
 If I Were Teacher. 
 
 My Visit to the Iron Foundry. 
 
 A Visit to the General Hospital. 
 
 How the Lawrence Filter Works. 
 
 The Sanitary Milk Station. 
 
 Essex Street on the Night Before Christmas. 
 
 The Transfer Station at 5 :30 p. m. 
 
 What the Ayer Mill Clock Sees. 
 
 A Hot Sunday Afternoon on the Common. 
 
 The Best Exhibit at Rockingham Fair. 
 
 At the Tribune Office at 4 p. m. 
 
 The Scarecrow. 
 
 When Mother Goes Away. 
 
 Getting up on a "Zero" Morning. 
 
 "Clean up" Week in Lawrence. 
 
 The Song of the Looms. 
 
 It Happened on the Belt Line Car. 
 
 The Rainbow in the Merrimack Falls. 
 
 Our Program on the Afternoon Before April 19. 
 
 If I Had My Own Way. 
 
 The Busy English Sparrow. 
 
 How to Procure a Public Library Card. 
 
 How I Made My Garden. 
 
 How We Earned Our Christmas Tree. 
 
 How to Treat a Frightened Horse. 
 
 How to Sew on a Button. 
 
 An Anecdote About Washington. 
 
 When My Ship Comes In. 
 
 Our Silly Puppy. 
 
 Why Cats Make Better Pets Than Dogs. 
 
 Is Country or City Life More Enjoyable? 
 
 Why Lawrence Was so Named. 
 
 Being Housekeeper for a Day. 
 
 97 
 
98 SIXTH GRADE 
 
 IV. Technicalities. 
 
 Quotation marks are here introduced for the first time. 
 Do not try to teach the so-called "broken quotation''. Emphasize 
 the idea that every ivord spoken by the person that is quoted, 
 and not one zvord more nor less, must be enclosed in quotation 
 marks. // every word spoken can be enclosed by one set of 
 quotation marks, then only one set is required. But if every 
 word spoken cannot be brought inside of one set of quotation 
 marks, without also taking in words that were not spoken by 
 the person quoted, then two sets must be used, or as many as 
 are necessary. Drill on quotation marks must not be overdone. 
 The school in the past has wasted many hours upon them, with 
 no results. Tests have proved that with all the teaching of 
 them, eighth grade children use them very imperfectly in their 
 free writing. As a matter of fact, quotation marks do not 
 enter enough into the kind of writing that the average boy and 
 girl do after they leave school to make it pay to spend very 
 much time in drill upon them. The same is true of the comma 
 in a series and the comma after the name of a person addressed, 
 two other points upon which we foolishly spent our time in 
 former days. 
 
 (i) Capitals. Use in abbreviations listed below, and in 
 first word of quotation. 
 
 (2) Punctuation marks necessary in letter forms. 
 
 (3) Abbreviations. Gov., Hon., Pres., Rev., and others 
 in general use. 
 
 (4) Quotation marks in simple quotations. 
 
 (5) Review all technicalities listed under earlier grades. 
 
 V. Words for Special Spelling Drill. 
 
 The pupils should be tested from month to month on all 
 the words in these special lists, from the second grade up. 
 From these tests, lists should be made of the words misspelled 
 by any considerable number of the class, and vigorous drill given 
 upon these words until subsequent tests prove they have been 
 mastered. Nothing short of perfect scores should satisfy the 
 teacher. It has been proved that not one eighth grade child in 
 
SIXTH GRADE 
 
 99 
 
 a thousand misspells more than one hundred words of his 
 ordinary writing vocabulary. It is believed that if all the 
 words contained in this course of study are thoroughly mastered, 
 the spelling problem, so far as the pupil's normal writing 
 vocabulary is concerned, will be satisfactorily solved. 
 
 (Review words are printed in italics.) 
 
 already 
 
 friend 
 
 studying 
 
 all right 
 
 having 
 
 their 
 
 beginning 
 
 heard 
 
 there 
 
 believe 
 
 minute 
 
 too 
 
 bicycle. 
 
 oblige 
 
 truly 
 
 business 
 
 pleasing 
 
 using 
 
 earning 
 
 quite 
 
 woolen 
 
 different 
 
 really 
 
 writing 
 
 enough 
 
 receive 
 
 
 except 
 
 replied 
 
 
 absence 
 
 describe 
 
 separate 
 
 allowed 
 
 hurried 
 
 several 
 
 attacked 
 
 library 
 
 speech 
 
 certainly 
 
 occurred 
 
 surprised 
 
 clothing 
 
 seized 
 
 
 VI. Written Standards. 
 
 All the studies that have been so far undertaken with a view 
 to establishing a scale for the measurement of composition 
 have shown that there is a startling diversity in the judgment 
 of teachers as to the excellence of compositions submitted by 
 pupils. The belief that this wide variation of judgment as to 
 the intrinsic merit of the same composition is due, in no small 
 degree, to the lack of anything like definite standards by which 
 the language work of pupils may be measured has led to the 
 formulation of the written standards set up in this course 
 of study. That there will be complete agreement as to 
 the suitability of these selections as standards is not to be 
 expected. But until further study and experimentation will 
 have evolved a better set of standards it is hoped that they 
 will help to interpret to teachers in concrete form the require- 
 ments of written language. 
 
IOO SIXTH GRADE 
 
 The composition that follows was written by a pupil of our 
 school system. It is intended to represent the language power 
 which it is believed the average sixth grade pupil who has been 
 trained along the lines suggested in this course of study ought 
 to possess. While it does not possess anything that savors of 
 literary style it has the merit of being definite and brief, with 
 an orderly arrangement of ideas, and with sentences gram- 
 matically complete. As has been stated previously, teachers 
 will find sixth grade pupils who seem to have inherited a 
 natural language power, for whom this standard will be low. If, 
 however, the majority of pupils who have completed the sixth year 
 can write a composition as good as the "standard", there will 
 be no cause for worry. 
 
 Something Good to Eat. 
 I belong to a cooking class that meets every Saturday after- 
 noon. Last week we learned to make something new. We took 
 a box of Uneedas and some marshmallows. On top of each 
 cracker we placed a marshmallow, and put them in a pan in a hot 
 oven. They stayed there long enough for the marshmallows to 
 puff up and brown. They are very good to eat with ice cream. 
 The next time you come to spend the afternoon with me, I will 
 prove it to you. 
 
 VII. Comments and Cautions. 
 
 Strive to avoid making composition work disliked. In all 
 correction try to stimulate the pupil to improve his written 
 language because of the value to himself, and teach him to 
 appreciate correction as an aid in securing that desired end. 
 Do not dwell on correction, either in oral or written work, so 
 much as to restrain the child's flow of thought. He should be 
 stimulated to do careful work, but should be left to express his 
 thought unchecked. 
 
 There are two lines of correction and criticism to be 
 observed continually : knozvn errors, those upon which there has 
 been previous class drill ; unknown errors, those which the. 
 pupil does not recognize as mistakes or weaknesses. Pupils 
 should be held to self-correction of the former (those errors 
 
SIXTH GRADE I0I 
 
 upon which they have been well drilled) ; but matters pertain- 
 ing to the bettering of their sentences, their choice of words,, 
 their arrangement of ideas are matters for the teacher to discuss 
 in class. She cannot do this if all her time is spent in correcting 
 mechanical errors. 
 
 See that your children get the habit of going over their 
 work carefully, before handing it in, and making any changes 
 they think will improve it. Pupils should feel free at such 
 times to draw a line through a word and substitute a better 
 one, or make any other changes that they think are for the 
 better. The wise teacher is not distressed by changes of this 
 sort made upon the paper. By degrees, the pupils who make 
 them will learn to anticipate errors, and choose in advance the 
 better word or the better form of sentence. We are not looking 
 for perfect papers ; we are looking to develop the power that 
 will later on make them less imperfect. This does not mean that 
 neatness is not to be encouraged and commended, or that 
 sloppy work is not to be condemned. It means that we must 
 be big enough not to fret over little things, so long as the 
 children are clearly on their way to better writing. And every 
 child is on his way to better writing who is getting the habit 
 of scrutinizing his composition, and correcting and improving 
 his work before the paper is carried up to the teacher. 
 
j(>2 SEVENTH GRADE 
 
 i 
 
 SEVENTH GRADE. 
 ORAL. 
 
 (One-half of the language time in the seventh grade is given 
 
 to oral work.) 
 
 I. Aims. 
 
 A seventh grade pupil at the end of the year ought to be 
 able, when called upon, to stand on both feet, away from the 
 desk, and talk for two or three minutes upon a subject familiar 
 to him in simple, clear, and grammatical English, with clear 
 enunciation and a natural pitch of voice. 
 
 The oral exercises should be planned and carried out as 
 carefully as the written exercises. Discuss the things that help 
 to make a speaker interesting, such as a correct standing 
 position, a pleasant quality of voice, clear enunciation, and a 
 rate of utterance not too fast to be hard to follow and slow 
 enough to insure clean-cut articulation ; eyes upon the school- 
 room audience, not upon the floor or the ceiling ; the manner 
 of one interested in what he is saying and in the effect he 
 desires to produce, instead of one performing a perfunctory or 
 unwilling task which he wants to have done with as soon 
 as possible. 
 
 In this grade the oral composition may well call for more 
 sustained effort. The pupil should begin to learn how to express 
 opinions (original or gathered from his reading) of persons, 
 measures, events, books, historical and literary characters. In 
 this grade it is well to give out topics several days in advance, 
 so that real preparation can be made with a view to oral 
 presentation. 
 
 Teachers cannot be too often reminded that oral work is 
 a great deal more important than the written work, although 
 in this grade an equal amount of the language time is devoted 
 to each. Children who leave school from the seventh grade 
 will probably have little occasion to write anything ; but they 
 
SEVENTH GRADE IO ? 
 
 will talk every day of their lives, and their success in life will 
 depend much more upon their ability to talk than upon their 
 ability to write. Besides, children who are to be taught to 
 write well must first be taught to talk well. There is scarcely 
 a point in written composition that cannot be developed as 
 effectively, and much more economically, in the oral exercise ; 
 viz., arrangement of ideas, correctness and variety of sentence 
 structure, choice and variety of words. Then, too, the moral 
 value of the training is great. When a boy's slouching, nerve- 
 less posture against his desk and his slovenly enunciation of 
 disjointed half-sentences have been exchanged for a body held 
 erect, a voice and an enunciation that carry thought clearly 
 stated, you have a boy who has gained in character as well as 
 in ability to talk correctly upon his feet. 
 
 Continue to emphasize the importance of good enunciation, 
 not only in the oral language period, but in all recitations. 
 The reading period ought to contribute more to this end than 
 it usually does. The fact that every individual in the school- 
 room audience (including the teacher) holds a printed copy of 
 what the pupil is reading aloud is not calculated to provide a 
 very strong motive for clean cut utterance. The listeners know 
 what the pupil is reading, even if neither his voice nor his 
 articulation is good. There is a growing suspicion that the 
 oral reading period in the grammar grades is very wasteful of 
 time as a means of teaching children to read, because the 
 reading ability that will function most practically in the lives 
 of children after their school days are over is not the ability to 
 read aloud, but the ability to gather thought swiftly and 
 accurately from the printed page — that is, the power to read 
 silently. But so long as oral reading holds its large place in 
 the daily program, it ought to be made as effective a means as 
 possible to improve children's speech by training them in the 
 right use of the voice, and by securing the best possible 
 enunciation of the words they read. It is certain that the work 
 in oral language, so far as clear utterance is concerned, would 
 be greatly helped out by a greater emphasis upon these matters 
 in the readme: lesson. 
 
104 
 
 SEVENTH GRADE 
 
 II. Examples of Oral Composition. 
 
 The oral paragraphs printed here are illustrative of the 
 wider range which the topics should take in the seventh grade. 
 No one of them relates to the pupil's own experience. They 
 are, instead, taken from the interesting things that children of 
 this age read in books, magazines, and newspapers. This does 
 not mean that the pupil's personal experiences should not be 
 drawn upon to furnish topics for his oral paragraphs. Subjects 
 from interesting personal experiences should still be included, 
 but not to the extent employed in the earlier grades. It was 
 not thought necessary, however, to take up space here with 
 examples of oral composition drawn from actual experience. 
 They are sufficiently illustrated by the examples given under 
 the oral work of the fifth and sixth grades. 
 
 Seventh grade teachers should study carefully the sug- 
 gestion printed under those two grades with reference to the 
 importance of training children to select a single phase of a 
 subject and to make the most of it they can in a single 
 paragraph, instead of spreading themselves out thin over a 
 topic so large that they cannot talk upon it interestingly within 
 the limits of a paragraph. This point was discussed at length 
 in the preface to the course under the heading, "Subjects Should 
 Be Personal. Definite, and Brief". 
 
 Delft. 
 Delft is a quaint little town of Holland. It is noted for the 
 making of china. The china is made from clay, which is after- 
 ward put into an oven and baked. Then it is taken out and 
 decorated with pictures of windmills, canals, and dikes. It is then 
 baked again. The pictures are really burned into the dish. Delft 
 china is famous all over the world. 
 
 The Windmills. 
 The windmills of Holland are very picturesque. They are 
 colored red, green, blue, or yellow. It makes one dizzy to watch 
 their great wings go around. They are used to grind corn, saw 
 wood, and to grind stone into sand. Sad to say, the days of 
 windmills are numbered. Steam is now taking their place in 
 many parts of Holland. 
 
SEVENTH GRADE I0 c 
 
 The Bazaars of Tunis. 
 
 If one should visit the fairs at Tunis, it would make him 
 think that he was reading the story of the "Arabian Nights". He' 
 would hear Arabic tongues speaking near him and see queer 
 Oriental costumes on every side, with little booths loaded and 
 draped with wonderful things. It is very hard for anyone to make 
 a bargain in the East, for the dealer always begins charging three 
 times as much as the fair price. 
 
 Old Ironsides. 
 
 The United States warship Constitution had been victorious 
 in many sea fights and had been fondly nicknamed Old Ironsides. 
 But at last she was unseaworthy and was about to be broken up. 
 A good many people did not like the idea of this. Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes was one of these. He wrote a poem protesting against 
 it and the poem stirred the hearts of the people so deeply that 
 the government decided not to break her up. Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes with his stirring poem saved the old ship. 
 
 Dawes's Ride. 
 
 All American people know Longfellow's poem of "Paul 
 Revere's Ride". From it Paul Revere has gained much fame for 
 his historic ride through Lexington to spread the alarm that the 
 British were coming. But few people are aware that while he 
 was doing this, another patriot, named William Dawes, was making 
 a similar ride through Roxbury. He was doing this under the: 
 direction of Joseph Warren, and his orders were about the same 
 as the ones given to Revere. Dawes did his part well, but Revere 
 got all the glory. 
 
 Florence Nightingale. 
 
 During the great Crimean war, in which England took part, 
 many wounded soldiers were left to die on the battle field and 
 many died from disease. Florence Nightingale, a rich English girb 
 hearing these pitiful tales, determined to go and help these poor 
 soldiers. She went to the front and took charge of the hospitals. 
 Every night she went the rounds of the wards to see if all the 
 soldiers were resting comfortably. All the soldiers loved her. 
 Some of them called her "The Lady with the Lamp". The work 
 of Florence Nightingale was the real beginning of the Red Cross 
 work that we hear about so much today. 
 
ic6 
 
 SEVENTH GRADE 
 
 III. Common Errors of Speech. 
 
 "If to do were as easy as to know what 'twere good to do" , 
 teachers would simply have to teach children the rules they 
 violate in their everyday speech, and the errors would straight- 
 way disappear. Unfortunately, correct speech is not acquired 
 by a knowledge of rules. The rules of grammar do not 
 fashion speech. They do not establish habits of correct usage ; 
 they only make that usage more intelligent. Therefore imitation, 
 practice, and habit — not rules, formulas, and definitions — should 
 be the watchwords of the teacher. It is constant use and 
 practice under never failing watch and correction that make 
 pupils talk well. 
 
 Two windows was broke. 
 
 Who done it? 
 
 We was to study history this period. 
 
 It don't matter. 
 
 He come to school with me. 
 
 They et the cakes. 
 The dog seen a squirrel. 
 I ain't doin' nothin'. 
 
 Who you going for? 
 Where's them two tickets? 
 
 Me and my brother wrote it. 
 
 We were to the show. 
 
 That book learns you how to take 
 
 care of animals. 
 Shall I bring this book home? 
 I wouldn't be left do it. 
 Is every one in their place? 
 "Those kind of flowers ain't pretty. 
 I didn't go no place. 
 
 My pen don't write good. 
 He had kind of a hard time. 
 Draw it like I said. 
 I'm all better noV. 
 
 He wouldn't of gone. 
 Are they any pencils ? 
 I'm doin' my work. 
 
 She uster live on Elm St. 
 Can't you see 'em? 
 Doncher see? 
 
 IV. Comments and Cautions. 
 
 The teacher must be convinced that it is supremely 
 worth while to equip a child with the power to express what he 
 thinks in direct and clean-cut -sentences, however simple, and 
 that clear expression reacts on clear thinking. 
 
SEVENTH GRADE l0 y 
 
 Children talk the talk of the majority on the playground, 
 on the streets, in their homes. The majority are careless of 
 rules and ignorant of standards. With a fourth-grade vocab- 
 ulary and fourth-grade habits of expression, a seventh- or 
 eighth-grade child can make known most of his wants and most 
 of his thoughts to his playmates and his family. The con- 
 versation that he hears passes on to him the worn coins of 
 provincialism and bad English. For a few hours a day, five days 
 out of seven, he is shut up in a different world, where the 
 teacher, perhaps, as one pupil said, "always requests us to use 
 good English". But what of it? Too often the only use for 
 any English at all is for a few words in answer to rapid-fire 
 questions, and nobody but the teacher has a chance to express 
 herself. It is no wonder that children consider their habits 
 of speech of little importance even in school, when the most 
 continuous expression required of them is the answering of 
 questions. If a teacher wishes to train children in right habits 
 of expression she must create opportunities for such expression ; 
 she must learn to keep still and let the pupils talk. When the 
 pupil does talk, the teacher should insist that he speak to the 
 point and only to the point, answer the question and nothing 
 but the question, and in the best words at his command. 
 
 WRITTEN. 
 
 (One-half of the language time of the seventh grade is given 
 to written work.) 
 
 I. Aims. 
 
 In the sixth grade some attention was given to one or two 
 of the more elementary principles of sentence structure, still 
 keeping within the limits of the simple sentence. Variety in 
 sentence beginnings was suggested, and the variety that results 
 from changing occasionally the monotonous sequence of subject, 
 verb, and object. In the seventh grade, if the teacher finds her 
 class up to grade in the fundamentals of their written work, 
 she should be encouraged to go a little farther into the study 
 of sentence betterment. She should also devote a little attention 
 
108 SEVENTH GRADE 
 
 to the study of choice of words. These matters have been 
 postponed until the seventh year, because the pupil does not 
 earlier perceive the value of such things. Up to this time, we 
 have aimed at copious and natural expression. Now we have 
 arrived at the place where the pupil himself, if he has been 
 led to become a willing producer of compositions expressing 
 his own experiences and views of life, feels the need of learning 
 how to say things better. This is the time, therefore, when 
 children are not only willing, but eager, to study how they may 
 contrive to say more effectively what they want to say. It is 
 not to be expected, nor desired, that children in the grammar 
 grades be taught many of the refinements of style. The 
 business of the grammar school is to teach them to write 
 correctly and clearly, and no teacher is to neglect the latter in 
 her efforts to secure the effects that come from increased skill 
 in handling sentences, or in the choice of words. It is better to 
 know nothing of style than to sacrifice clearness and correctness 
 in the process of getting it. The work here suggested should 
 not be begun as class exercises until the second half of the 
 year. By that time the teacher will know whether the children 
 are ready for it, and, in addition, the pupils will by that time 
 have gained from their grammar work enough familiarity with 
 the grammatical structure of the sentence to enable them to 
 begin the work of expanding, and otherwise improving, their 
 sentences more understandingly. These matters should deal 
 only with the simplest and most useful points of style. 
 
 The following ways of bettering the sentence are not 
 thought to be beyond the capacity of seventh grade pupils : 
 (i) Expanding the short simple sentence by amplifying the 
 
 subject and predicate by (i) a word, (2) a phrase, 
 
 (3) a clause. 
 
 (2) Combining sets of short sentences that have unity of 
 thought into a single sentence. 
 
 (3) Contracting long sentences, by reducing a clause to a 
 phrase, a phrase to a word. 
 
 (4) Seeking variety in sentence beginnings, and through 
 mixing long and short sentences in the paragraph. 
 Emphasis sought through a change in form of sentence 
 
SEVENTH GRADE 
 
 IOCj 
 
 (using the interrogative and exclamatory sentences for 
 the sake of breaking up the monotony) and through a 
 change in the order of words in the sentence, as sug- 
 gested for sixth grade work. 
 
 The teacher should be on her guard not to overdo this 
 conscious manipulation of sentences, so as to produce an 
 artificial style. It is the common experience of teachers of 
 composition that if this work of expanding sentences is gone 
 into mechanically and in wholesale fashion, its results are likely 
 to be disappointing. In the effort of the pupils to put into a 
 single sentence what before they were accustomed to express 
 in two or three sentences, there is likely to appear a new awkward- 
 ness that is very disconcerting to the teacher. Only the teacher's 
 good language sense will carry her successfully through these 
 first ventures toward conscious style. 
 
 The work of awakening in pupils a sense of word values 
 is attended by no such danger, and becomes for children a most 
 pleasurable study, if the teacher herself has a genuine feeling 
 for words and is sensitive to their power of suggestion. It is 
 not expected that grammar school children will become expert 
 in the use of exact, appropriate, and expressive words. All that 
 teachers should hope to do, or try to do, is to awaken in their 
 pupils the beginnings of an appreciation of words, so that some 
 of them, at least, will not be satisfied with the meagre stock of 
 worn-out words with which many people are content to express 
 themselves both in speech and writing. Dickens tells us of a 
 young man in Doctor Blimber's school who was so badly taught 
 that when he began to have whiskers he left off having brains. 
 Most people stop learning words as soon as they have accu- 
 mulated a vocabulary sufficient to communicate their commonest 
 wants, and go through life on a fourth-grade vocabulary. The 
 school, therefore, ought to do a little more than it has done to 
 start the current of children's thought in the direction of a 
 better choice of words in their speech and their writing. It i^ 
 work that will not take much time. Occasional talks upon the 
 value of expressive words, illustrated and reinforced by the 
 reading- of selections from writers who are acknowledged 
 
1IO SEVENTH GRADE 
 
 masters of the art of diction, will do much to arouse a desire 
 in the pupils to use a livelier verb here or a more expressive 
 adjective there in their written paragraphs. Nothing is more 
 valuable than the use of the "model", unless it be the teacher's 
 own sensitiveness to words aptly used and phrases happily 
 turned. If the teacher who reads to her class a paragraph 
 illustrating the use of "words fitly chosen" does not make 
 manifest her own keen appreciation and delight, the art of the 
 "model" will not be likely to impress her pupils. 
 
 There are many text books that deal admirably with the 
 subjects of sentence betterment and the choice of words. A 
 few are mentioned here. Most of them are high-school text 
 books, and their treatment of the matters is too advanced for 
 grammar school pupils. They are put here for the use of 
 teachers, who will find in them many suggestions which they 
 can use to advantage with their own classes. 
 
 BETTERMENT OF THE SENTENCE. 
 
 Hitchcock's "Practice Book in English Composition", pp. 1 19-136. 
 
 "The Mother Tongue", Book II, pp. 427-441. 
 
 Maxwell's "Writing in English", pp. 143-161. 
 
 Hanson's "English Composition", pp. 131-141. 
 
 Scott & Denney, "Elementary English Composition", pp. 80-100. 
 
 Huntington's "Elementary English Composition", pp. 100-152. 
 
 "Practice Work in English", (Knight) pp. 1 18-146. 
 
 Bailey and Manley, Bc^ok II, pp. 124-130. 
 
 Aldine Second Language Book, pp. 179, 180, 181, 195, 205. 
 
 Gerrish & Cunningham, "Practical English Composition", pp. 169-215. 
 
 Canby & Opdycke, "Elements of Composition", pp. 40-93- 
 
 CHOICE OF WORDS. 
 
 "Mother Tongue", Book II, pp. 396-402; 435-436. 
 
 Maxwell's "Writing in English", pp. 187-205. 
 
 "First Book of Composition" (Briggs & McKenney), pp. 55-75 T 
 
 183-193; 197-213- 
 Brooks's "English Composition", I, pp. 132-145- 
 Gerrish & Cunningham's "Practical English Composition", pp. 
 
 216-224. 
 Canby & Opdycke's "Elements of Composition", pp. 160-187. 
 Macdonald's "Foundation English", pp. 38-70. 
 Hanson's "English Composition", pp. 142-166. 
 Huntington's "Elementary English Composition", pp. 152-166. 
 
SEVENTH GRADE IIX 
 
 II. Lines of Work. 
 
 ( i ) Sentences. 
 
 (2) Paragraphs. 
 
 (3) Friendly Letters. 
 
 (4) Business Letters. 
 
 (5) Testing mechanics and accuracy by occasional exercises 
 in copying, dictation, and short reproduction. 
 (Seventh grade children should write from dictation at 
 the rate of about 21 words a minute, according to the 
 Courtis scale.) 
 
 III. Topics for Original Paragraphs. 
 
 The topics here given are drawn mostly from experience. 
 In keeping with what was said under the head of oral composi- 
 tion for this grade, the teacher may here enlarge the field to 
 include topics chosen from the things that interest the pupils in 
 their studies and in their outside reading. The teacher should 
 read all that has been said in earlier grades with reference to 
 training pupils in the art of "elaborating" simple themes in such 
 way as to make them interesting. Especially should she study 
 the two examples printed under the sixth grade oral work, 
 illustrating the wrong way and the right way of handling a 
 topic. The chapter in the foreword entitled "Subjects Should 
 Be Personal, Definite, and Brief" will bear frequent re-reading. 
 
 It is not necessary that all pupils in a seventh grade class 
 should write upon the same subject at the same time. There 
 is no greater drudgery than trying to write upon an unfamiliar 
 subject or an uninteresting one. No habit of good writing can 
 be formed without a ground work of interest. Subjects should 
 be personal. What subject that is worth writing about can be 
 personal to forty individuals? The same subject for a whole 
 class will, in most cases, require much oral development. Ideas 
 must be drawn out of the class, or handed out to them ready 
 made by the teacher. Only the children whom the subject 
 touches personally can contribute anything worth while to the 
 preliminary oral discussion, and onlv these will write about it 
 with any heart. The other papers will be weak imitations. 
 
112 SEVENTH GRADE 
 
 My First Experience on Skates. 
 A Boy Scout Hike. 
 Celebrating Our Football Victory. 
 A Dangerous Moment in the Auto. 
 Bobbing for Apples on Hallowe'en. 
 What the Audience Laughed at Most at Our Circus. 
 How to Lay Out a Baseball Diamond. 
 
 The First Base Man on the Baseball Team. (Each position to 
 be made the subject of a paragraph.) 
 
 An Amusing Mishap in School. 
 
 The School House. 
 
 How Our School Observed Peace Day. 
 
 How I got My Newsboy's License. 
 
 Does it Pay to Stay in School Until Graduation? 
 
 Persuade a Boy Who is Unfair in the School Games to Give Others 
 
 a Chance. 
 Fifteen Minutes in Our Assembly Hall. 
 My Hopes on Promotion Day. 
 
 The Best Number on the Program of Our School Entertainment. 
 When the Master Comes in for a Lesson. 
 A Grand Army Man at Our School. 
 My First Day in the Grade. 
 
 What a Visitor to Lawrence Should See. 
 
 Noon at the Mill Gate. 
 
 The Soldiers' Monument on Memorial Day. 
 
 On the Falls Bridge. 
 
 At the Fire Station When an Alarm Rings. 
 
 Essex Street on Saturday Afternoon. 
 
 A Visit to the Reservoir. 
 
 At the Corner Store. 
 
 The Spring Freshet Seen from the Falls Bridge. 
 
 The Most Attractive Window on Essex Street. 
 
 The Busiest Corner of Essex Street. 
 
 When Our Engine Goes to a Fire. 
 
 An Experience as a Newsboy. 
 
 The Nine O'Clock Curfew Bells. 
 
 How My Caterpillar Turned Into a Butterfly. 
 
 The Ambulance Goes by. 
 
 The Patrol Wagon Arrives. 
 
 When the Organ Grinder Comes to Our Street. 
 
 My Most Interesting Neighbor. 
 
 The Store Windows at Christmas. 
 
 A Good Citizen. 
 
 A Neglected Tenement House. 
 
 How a Cat Prepares to go to Sleep. 
 
SEVENTH GRADE T ,3 
 
 How I Earned My First Money. 
 
 How to Behave in a Boat. 
 
 How to Get Off a Car. 
 
 Why I'd Rather Be a Boy. 
 
 Why I am a Member of the Humane Society. 
 
 Why Boys and Girls Should Learn to Swim. 
 
 How My Bird Changes His Clothes. 
 
 Why Girls are More Useful to Their Parents Than Boys. 
 
 IV. Technicalities. 
 
 Review the technicalities taught in the earlier grades, when- 
 ever the written work of your class indicates the need of review. 
 Do not waste time in reviewing, just for the sake of reviewing. 
 Take care that no time is spent on technicalities which are not 
 required, and which have keen purposely omitted from this 
 course. 
 
 In the second half of the year, it may become necessary 
 to give some attention to the use of the comma within the 
 sentence. The restriction of the written sentence to the simple 
 form in grades below the seventh, has made unnecessary any 
 reference to this use of the comma before. Presumably the 
 work of expanding the sentence, which is to be taken up in 
 the second half of the seventh year (see "Written Aims") will 
 result in the more general use of the longer sentence, which may 
 be of such form as to require the use of commas to separate 
 the members. Many pupils will use the comma naturally in this 
 way. Indeed, most children punctuate their sentences without 
 being told how to do it. They absorb the idea unconsciously 
 from the punctuation of the matter they read in and out of 
 school. There may be no need of your teaching this use of 
 the comma at all. And unless the failure to use it is general, it 
 would be best not to bother about it. If it is taught at all, it 
 should be taught only in its very simplest uses. Children cannot 
 make fine distinctions. The teacher who harps on the use of 
 commas will find a great many of them in her pupils' papers, 
 but a large proportion of them will be in the wrong place. 
 
 Spend no time on the comma in a series or on the comma 
 in direct address. Spend very little time upon quotation marks, 
 and make no reference to "broken" or "divided" quotations. 
 See that the punctuation of the letter form is thoroughly known. 
 
H4 
 
 SEVENTH GRADE 
 
 V. Words for Special Spelling Drill. 
 
 (Review words are printed in italics.) 
 
 absence 
 
 describe 
 
 their 
 
 all ready 
 
 friend 
 
 there 
 
 all right 
 
 laughed 
 
 too 
 
 already 
 
 library 
 
 truly 
 
 attacked 
 
 loose 
 
 weather 
 
 believe 
 
 minute 
 
 wholly 
 
 certainly 
 
 perhaps 
 
 written 
 
 changing 
 
 really 
 
 
 choose 
 
 surprised 
 
 
 anxious 
 
 disappeared 
 
 necessary 
 
 chief 
 
 finally 
 
 precede 
 
 copied 
 
 foreign 
 
 principal 
 
 cordially 
 
 government 
 
 probably 
 
 despair 
 
 grammar 
 
 respectfully 
 
 disagreeable 
 
 judgment 
 
 sincerely 
 
 VL Written Standards. 
 
 It will be noticed that the selections printed in this course 
 as examples of oral and written composition are free from 
 errors of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. This does not 
 make them any less useful as standards than if the childish 
 errors had been retained. It is not expected that children are 
 going to write papers that are mechanically perfect from be- 
 ginning to end. On the other hand, there is nO doubt that 
 the relatively simple requirements for written work laid down 
 in this course of study make for conditions much more favorable 
 for correct work upon the part of the pupils than was the case 
 when the requirements were less definite. The restriction of 
 the sentences below the seventh grade to the simple form, except 
 in the case of pupils who have more than ordinary language 
 power, will keep out of the compositions most of the loose and 
 disjointed construction that characterizes children's unrestricted 
 writing. The errors, therefore, will be chiefly those of spelling 
 and grammar, and the omission of the capital and the closing 
 mark. Children can always be counted upon to furnish their 
 quota of such errors. They would not be children, if they did 
 
SEVENTH GRADE H5 
 
 not. Still, the ideal of both teacher and pupil should be a 
 paragraph free from errors of this very sort, and for that reason 
 the printed standards have been made free from them. 
 
 Christmas Windows. 
 The other day I watched two children gazing at the toys 
 in a large store window. The little girl was greatly taken with a 
 large doll that had golden hair and big blue eyes. Her tiny brother 
 clapped his hands at the sight of a little white woolly bear, that 
 held his arms out toward him. Each new toy they spied was 
 greeted with cries of delight. After a while they moved farther 
 up the street to gaze into other windows. As they went out of 
 sight I thought how nice it would be to be rich. For then I could 
 make many poor children happy on Christmas morning. 
 
 VII. Comments and Cautions. 
 
 The idea that criticism must be helpful, sympathetic, and 
 constructive needs to be kept in mind. Webster defines 
 criticism as "the art of judging with knowledge and propriety 
 of the beauties and faults of a literary performance." Too 
 often in school composition only the latter half of the definition, 
 "judging of the faults," is considered criticism, with the result 
 that the child becomes discouraged and indifferent to his writing. 
 Especially is this true when the corrections are numerous. 
 Some mistakes (except of form) should pass unnoticed with 
 many pupils. What is the good of having pupils' papers 
 corrected and recorrected until all errors disappear and little 
 remains of the original except the handwriting? Such papers 
 are not evidence of the children's ability to express themselves 
 in good English, but rather of the teacher's ability to substitute 
 her knowledge for the pupil's, perhaps without realizing that 
 she is doing so. On the other hand, the teacher who can 
 stimulate her pupils to greater efforts by her judicious appre- 
 ciation of what they have already done will succeed in making 
 them enthusiastic users of English. A sense of humor is what 
 we need, not sarcasm. 
 
I i 6 EIGHTH GRADE 
 
 EIGHTH GRADE. 
 ORAL. 
 
 (One-half of the language time in the eighth grade is given 
 
 to oral work.) 
 
 I. Aims. 
 
 The aim in oral work for the eighth grade is, as was set 
 forth in the foreword, to turn out pupils at the end of the year 
 able to stand before the class and talk for a few minutes upon 
 a subject zvithin the range of their knowledge or experience, 
 speaking plainly, in clean-cut sentences, and without common 
 grammatical mistakes. The points emphasized in the seventh 
 year (erect standing, clear enunciation, etc.), should be re- 
 emphasized in the eighth grade. The oral composition topics 
 should take a wider range, and much individual freedom of 
 choice allowed. Some of the work at first, and most of it later 
 in the year, should be assigned in advance, so that pupils may 
 learn how to look up material, and study how to arrange and 
 present it effectively. A few oral compositions presented with 
 care, and criticised fully and deliberately by the tencher and the 
 class, are better than many less carefully prepared and com- 
 mented upon by the teacher in a hurried, superficial fashion. 
 In the course of the criticism opportunity will be given for 
 many pupils to talk, and all will learn from the discussion much 
 that will improve their own talking. Care must be taken that 
 these prepared oral compositions are not memorized. It is 
 proper that pupils should fix in their minds the chief points of 
 the matter they intend to talk about in class ; but the practice of 
 learning the matter of their oral compositions by heart should 
 never be permitted. Teachers should be careful, also, that such 
 prepared compositions are given in the pupils' own language. 
 It is hardly possible for a teacher of experience not to know 
 when a pupil tries to palm off as his own composition something 
 that he has learned or copied from a book or a newspaper. 
 
 Debates furnish excellent opportunity for training in talking 
 
EIGHTH GRADE I 17 
 
 clearly and to the point. The management by the pupils of 
 the regular morning exercises, of special day exercises, and 
 occasionally of the recitation, gives opportunity for the exercise 
 of initiative and responsibility, and cultivates self-possession 
 and self-poise. A teacher's success in accomplishing results in 
 oral composition lies in her ability to arouse the interest of her 
 pupils, in furnishing real motives and the most natural con- 
 ditions for the work, in her skill in directing the choice of 
 topics, and in her power to make the criticism encouraging, 
 helpful, and constructive. 
 
 II. Examples of Oral Compositions. 
 
 Calendars. 
 There are very many kinds of calendars. In business offices 
 there are large ones with big black figures. In the sitting room at 
 home are artistic little affairs on different colors of cardboard. 
 Sometimes we see upon them pictures of a historical subject, while 
 others may be reproductions of pictures from the brush of famous 
 artists. People who like to make these dainty little affairs are now 
 engaged in making them to present to friends on Christmas. They 
 will be as useful presents, as New Year's will soon be here. The 
 children of the public schools make very pretty ones for their 
 parents. 
 
 "Bobs." 
 1 have a little Boston terrier, Bobs, named after General 
 Roberts, who died a little while ago. A white mark runs up the 
 middle of his head, and ends with a white neck, which is followed 
 by a smooth brindle. Two of his feet have brown stockings and 
 white shoes, the others brown stockings and brown shoes. He has 
 a little screw tail, the end of it being white, and an undershot jaw, 
 with very irregular teeth. Sometimes I try to brush them with a 
 doll's tooth brush. He knows many tricks that I have taught him, 
 and on the whole he is a very smart dog. 
 
 Gallows Hill. 
 One nf the most interesting places in Salem is Gallows Hill. 
 In the winter of 1691 a few girls of Salem by uttering strange 
 cries made the people believe they were bewitched. When they 
 were asked who bewitched them, at first they would not reply, but 
 later named some innocent old women as the witches. The women 
 were tried and put in jail. Soon many others, and even a small 
 child of four, were found guilty. Some of the women were hanged 
 on Gallows Hill. It is a very steep, rocky hill. The iron ends of 
 the gallows frame may still be seen in the ledges on the summit. 
 
n8 
 
 EIGHTH GRADE 
 
 The Poultry Show. 
 For the last few days City Hall has been filled with hundreds 
 of fancy poultry and pigeons, and the noise they made was anything 
 but musical. The geese were gray and white, with large bills, and 
 so tall that their heads touched the wires of the tops of their cages. 
 There was a crowd always gathered about the chicken incubators. 
 In one there were some tiny fluffy chicks just out of the shell, and 
 in another they were running busily about. The pigeons were very 
 pretty. A lovely one won a cup. The fan-tail pigeons strutted 
 about in their cages like small peacocks. Another kind had gay 
 plumes on their heads. Many of the cages had ribbon prizes hung 
 about them. 
 
 The Longfellow House in Portland. 
 In the city of Portland, Maine, on Congress Street, there 
 is an interesting little house. It stands a short distance back from 
 the main street. The people of Portland call it the Longfellow 
 mansion, because the' beloved poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 
 was born in it. It is a brick mansion, three stories high, with 
 chimneys of the high, old-fashioned kind. There are certain days 
 that are set apart for the privilege of letting strangers visit this 
 home and examine its many treasures. I read many famous names 
 in the register of visitors in the hall. 
 
 III. Common Errors of Speech. 
 
 (Note: The teacher should read the chapter on "Common 
 Errors of Speech" which is printed in an Appendix, and the 
 comments made under this section in all the grades from the 
 first to the seventh.) 
 
 There is enough pencils. 
 I done my examples. 
 You was right. 
 Neither of the girls have it. 
 It don't seem right. 
 
 We all seen the ball game. 
 Two of the wheels come off. 
 I ain't got none. 
 
 Who did this come from? 
 He'll meet you and I. 
 
 I like them colors. 
 
 I heard of vou leaving. 
 
 I left my book to home. 
 'She is all better to-day. 
 1 have quite a few pears. 
 I like these kind of examples. 
 They wouldn't leave him play. 
 They done it pretty good. 
 Can I take my history home? 
 'That's different than I expected. 
 
 I've learned it to her. 
 
 I don't know if I shall go. 
 
 Do it like they do. 
 
 Where are you at? 
 
 Each may take their pencils. 
 
 The lesson ain't in the book. 
 
EIGHTH GRADE 
 
 I must of been late. He makes 'em think! 
 
 I reco'nized the story. 
 
 119 
 
 IV. Comments and Cautions. 
 
 Should the pupils' answers to all questions be made in 
 complete statements? That depends. While a subject is being 
 developed by the teacher in logical order by questions, a full 
 statement might hinder the quick grasp of a point on the part 
 of the pupil, and might break the train of the teacher's 
 questioning. At such times, full statements are not necessary 
 and need not be insisted upon. The same is true in conversa- 
 tional exercises involving questions. Insistence upon complete 
 statements at such times would be establishing a condition that 
 is unnatural, unusual in life, and peculiar to the schoolroom. 
 /// the recitation, however, the answers should be given, almost 
 always, in complete statements. 
 
 It will not do to pass by mistakes on the ground that the 
 pupil cannot think and speak correctly at the same time. That 
 is precisely what he must learn to do, and he must carefully 
 practice it in every study. 
 
 Every recitation should strengthen the habit of connected 
 thinking and correct speech, cast into complete sentences. 
 
 WRITTEN. 
 
 (One-half of the language time in the eighth grade is given 
 to written zvork.) 
 
 I. Aims. 
 
 This course of study has been built upon the conviction 
 that the written language work in the grammar school should 
 be confined to a few fundamental things, and that there should 
 be constant opportunity for practice in these few fundamental 
 things. In the preface the following standard was set up as 
 the goal of grammar school teaching. It is believed that the 
 
120 EIGHTH GRADE 
 
 ability the standard calls for is the kind that will function most 
 usefully in the life of the average grammar school graduate, 
 and that the degree of ability it represents is one reasonably 
 possible to be acquired by children of ordinary capacity during 
 eight years of school. The standard was thus defined : 
 
 "The ability to write with fair facility an original 
 paragraph upon a subject within the range of the pupil's 
 experience or interests." 
 
 Such a paragraph should show : 
 i. An absolute mastery of "the sentence idea". 
 
 2. Freedom from glaring grammatical mistakes. 
 
 3. Correct spelling of all ordinary words. 
 
 4. Unfailing use of the commonest marks in punctua- 
 tion. 
 
 5. Some evidence of attention to matters of sentence 
 structure and to the choice of words. 
 
 6. Some degree of power to organize and arrange 
 ideas around a central thought. 
 
 In developing this power to write, each grade has its share 
 of the work to do. Each grade has its own standard of 
 accomplishment set down for it in black and white. With the 
 work each grade is called upon to do and with the standard 
 of writing ability each grade is expected to reach, the eighth 
 grade teacher should make herself thoroughly familiar. Before 
 starting upon the new work assigned to her grade, she should 
 ascertain what the new class knows about written composition 
 when it comes to her and what language habits it possesses. 
 Upon the basis of the knowledge thus discovered, she should 
 then plan her work for the year with a view to round out and 
 complete the training which the course of study as a whole 
 contemplates. If deficiencies of a general character are revealed 
 by these early tests of their writing ability, the teacher must 
 face the task of removing them so far as she can. There is no 
 other year left in which to do it. It is important, of course, 
 that the ability of the new class should be tested on the basi:; 
 of seventh grade standards, not of eighth grade standards. 
 One of the reasons why teachers so often find fault at first with 
 
EIGHTH GRADE I2 r 
 
 the pupils who come up to them from a lower grade is because 
 their judgment of the new comers in September is unconsciously 
 colored by their memory of what the previous class was able 
 to do in June. But if any large portion of the class is found 
 deficient in the fundamentals of writing, these matters must be 
 brought up to the standard before any of the advance work 
 suggested for the grade is attempted. It is of no use to try to 
 teach the rudiments of style to children who cannot write correct 
 sentences. 
 
 The advance work for the grade, when the class is ready 
 for it, should be a continuation of the work in sentence better- 
 ment and in the choice of words which was begun in the seventh 
 grade. The sentence work should include transforming, com- 
 bining, condensing and otherwise varying them, with the purpose 
 of making children see how they can say what they have to say 
 more pleasingly and more effectively. This work should not be 
 overdone, however. The most that is sought through the work 
 in sentence structure is to remove from the written paragraphs 
 the monotony of the "primer sentence", which has been 
 purposely cultivated in the grades below the seventh. A good 
 many children naturally use the longer sentence, and to such 
 children its use has not been denied in the lower grades. The 
 short sentence has been exclusively required only from those 
 who show themselves unable to use any other kind without 
 getting into trouble. If, therefore, the eighth grade teacher 
 finds most of the class using in their compositions a reasonable 
 variety of sentence structure, she will be wise not to spend 
 very much time on the sentence work. It is a matter that has 
 to be left largely to the teacher's judgment. 
 
 The books mentioned under this topic in the seventh 
 grade treat fully the subject of sentence improvement, and to 
 these the eighth grade teacher is referred. Most of these books 
 are not adapted for use with grammar school pupils ; but the 
 teacher will find much material in them which she can adapt 
 to the needs and ability of her class. The prose literature that 
 the children read offers an excellent field for the study ot 
 sentence structure. Lead them constantly to observe how good 
 
j 22 EIGHTH GRADE 
 
 writers manage their sentences. Similarly, passages selected 
 from authors not read by the children may be reduced to short 
 sentences by the teacher and given to the children to combine 
 into longer ones. Afterwards let them compare their efforts 
 with the passage as the author wrote it. Exercises in com- 
 bining sentences which are made up by the teacher or taken at 
 random from a text book generally leave the pupils uncertain 
 of the success of their attempts, because of the lack of any 
 positive authority as to what the best form of the combinations 
 should be. The opportunity afforded to compare the pupils' 
 efforts with the author's original adds greatly to the interest of 
 the exercise, and the frequent act of comparing their work 
 with that of writers of repute impresses upon them more deeply 
 than any amount of talking can do, the difference between their 
 crude work and the finished workmanship of the master writer. 
 If pupils can be brought to appreciate understanding^ the art 
 -of good writers and be led by reason of it to try to improve 
 their own workmanship, the chief object of this work will have 
 been gained. Always, however, the teacher must guard against 
 the mistake of making children so conscious of their style that 
 it will spoil their freedom of expression. There is danger, too, 
 that too much work in combining and transforming sentences 
 as a separate exercise will lead to an artificial style, or what 
 is worse, a "wordy" style. Sentences are not improved by 
 putting more words into them than are necessary, but children's 
 well-intentioned efforts to round out their sentences often result 
 in making them merely "wordy". A clause is no stronger 
 than a phrase, nor a phrase than a word, unless something is 
 distinctly gained by the employment of the longer expression. 
 The . monotonous "which" clause — one of the first products of 
 exercises in combining short sentences — is likely to prove a 
 nuisance unless the teacher knows how to head it off. 
 
 This work in sentence improvement should go hand in hand 
 with the writing of original paragraphs, and should not sidetrack 
 the latter for any considerable period during the year. The 
 •only way the teacher can be sure that the special exercises in 
 .sentence structure are doing her pupils any good is the evidence 
 
EIGHTH GRADE 
 
 I -'3 
 
 of better sentences in the original paragraphs they write from 
 day to day. 
 
 In the seventh grade a beginning was made to teach 
 children to be more attentive to the words they use in their 
 written paragraphs. This point should be made still more of 
 in the eighth grade. The teacher should do all she can to teach 
 them the value of expressive words. This work should not 
 occupy any particular period during the year, but should run 
 through all the teaching from the first. The books mentioned 
 under this section in the seventh grade will give teachers 
 excellent material and suggestions, although the treatment of 
 the subject in most of these books is of a character more suit- 
 able to high school pupils. The literature read in class furnishes 
 a constant supply of material, if the teacher will make good 
 use of it. In addition, she should from time to time read to 
 the children paragraphs illustrating the use of apt and ex- 
 pressive words. The books referred to contain many such 
 paragraphs. An excellent exercise may be provided in this 
 fashion : The teacher chooses a paragraph particularly strong in 
 respect to the choice of words. This she "rewrites", sub- 
 stituting "weak" words for the author's effective ones. The 
 paragraph in this shape is then written upon the board, or a 
 copy of it given to each pupil. The pupils are then instructed 
 to substitute for the "weak" words (which the teacher has 
 indicated in her copy by underscoring ) words which the children 
 think are better ones. After they have done their best, they 
 are then shown the author's original. The value of this 
 exercise lies in the opportunity it gives the pupils to compare 
 their best efforts with the work of the trained writer. 
 
 It is not expected that eighth grade children will become 
 expert in the use of words in a single year. The chief thing to 
 be sought through this kind of teaching is to train children 
 to give attention to the words they read and the words they 
 write, so that all of them will not be content all the time to put 
 down the first word that comes into their minds. 
 
 Care should be taken that children are not led to believe 
 that we want them to use "flowery" language. This is no 
 
124 
 
 EIGHTH GRADE 
 
 longer a merit in any writing, and is particularly bad form in 
 children's writing. Naturalness, simplicity, and sincerity are 
 the qualities of style to be encouraged, and the moment children 
 begin to be "flowery", these qualities disappear from their 
 writing. They have at their command only a few worn out 
 phrases, like "the murmuring brook", "the moon's silvery light", 
 "the white blanket of the snow", and similar stale and senti- 
 mental commonplaces. Besides, they lack that sure sense of 
 appropriateness which saves the trained writer from offending 
 against good taste by over-adornment of language. The two 
 paragraphs which follow illustrate the effect of the conventional 
 phrase and worn-out diction, just referred to, in contrast with 
 that which comes from the use of fresh, natural, and vivid 
 words. Each describes a day in Spring. 
 
 "Canoeing is an ideal sport for lovers of nature. A spring 
 day is a day which the canoeist longs for. It enables him to drink 
 in nature with all its splendors. The leaves of the trees are just 
 beginning to sprout and convey an expression of joy to humanity. 
 The birds are chirping cheerfully and welcome you with a beckon 
 of the head, as you glide softly over the smooth waters. The 
 stream flows on with the utmost vigor, and the sound of its 
 ripple mingles with the songs of the birds. Everything is in 
 harmony with nature. Even your canoe appears to be enjoying 
 the scene, .for it seems to require less strength than ever to propel 
 it. But at last you draw a deep sigh of regret when the veil of 
 darkness falls and puts an end to your enjoyment." 
 
 "There is one day when all things are tired, and the very 
 smells, as they drift on the heavy air, are old and used. One 
 cannot explain this, but it feels so. Then there is another day — to 
 the eye nothing whatever has changed — when all the smells are 
 new and delightful, and the whiskers of the jungle people quiver 
 to their roots, and the winter hair comes away from their sides 
 in long, draggled locks. Then, perhaps, a little rain falls, and the 
 trees and the bushes and the bamboos and the mosses and the 
 juicy-leaved plants wake with a noise of growing that you can 
 almost hear, and under this noise runs, day and night, a deep 
 hum. That is the noise of the Spring — a vibrating boom which 
 is neither bees, nor falling water, nor the wind in the tree tops, 
 but the purring of the warm, happy world." 
 
 It is not to be expected that children can be taught to 
 write of a Spring day as Kipling can ; but at least they can be 
 prevented from writing in the fashion of the first paragraph. 
 
EIGHTH GRADE 
 
 125 
 
 II. Lines of Work. 
 
 1. Words. 
 
 2. Sentences. 
 
 3. Paragraphs. 
 
 4. Letters, both friendly and business. 
 
 5. Testing Accuracy and Knowledge of Form by Copying, 
 Dictation and the Short Reproduction. 
 
 (According to the Courtis standard, eighth grade 
 children should write from dictation at a rate of about 
 2T, words a minute.) 
 
 III. Topics for Original Paragraphs. 
 
 The topics listed here, like most of the topics printed under 
 the earlier grades, are drawn from the material of children's 
 experience. In this grade, however, the topics may be given 
 a wider scope, so as to include subjects within the range of the 
 pupils' reading, at home or in school, the idea being that eighth 
 grade pupils should have opportunity to write about any subject 
 in which they have a genuine interest, whether it be something 
 which they themselves have experienced or about which they 
 know only through their reading or study. Any subject is a good 
 one which ( 1 ) they know well enough to discuss interestingly, 
 (2) which they can handle within the limits of a single para- 
 graph, and (3) which will permit the expression of their own 
 thoughts in their own language. Pupils should for the most 
 part choose their own subjects, and should always have two or 
 three in mind, so that they may be well thought oat before the 
 time for writing comes. Barrett Wendell says, "Words and 
 sentences are subjects of revision, compositions are subjects of 
 prevision". Pupils should be trained to keep their eyes open, 
 day after day, for good subjects to write about, even though 
 at the time none is called for, and to develop the habit of 
 "thinking over" the topic, to select the particular phase of it 
 that can be best worked up, and to decide what details may be 
 most effectively told. 
 
 Many of the topics printed under the preceding grades', are 
 quite as suitable for eighth grade pupils as they are for younger 
 
I2 6 EIGHTH GRADE 
 
 children. The topics have been distributed among the grades 
 with some reference to the interests, age, and maturity of the 
 children in the different grades. But a little adaptation wilL 
 make any of them usable in the eighth grade. 
 
 Sliding Down Essex Hill. 
 
 A Thrilling Moment at the Bonfire. 
 
 The Play That Won the Game. 
 
 What it Means to be a Boy Scout. 
 
 What it Means to be a Camp Fire Girl. 
 
 A Game That Trains Me to be Quick. 
 
 "A Man On Second and Two Gone." 
 
 How to Make a Raft. 
 
 A Mishap at the School Picnic. 
 
 A True Fish Story. 
 
 "Making Up" for the Hallowe'en Party. 
 
 Being a Baseball Fan at Riverside Park. 
 
 The Hero of the Baseball Team. 
 
 How to Behave When a Visitor Comes. 
 
 How to Behave When the Fire Drill Signal Rings. 
 
 Why I Like to go to the School. 
 
 Why I Want to Stay in School After I am Fourteen. 
 
 Why I Want to Go to Work When I am Fourteen. 
 
 Why History (or any other study) is the Best School Study. 
 
 Why Geography is the Most Useful Study. 
 
 Convince Your Teacher That You Ought to Have an Extra Holiday; 
 
 Something Not on the Program. 
 
 Why Won the Spelling Match. 
 
 My Idea of High School. 
 
 The New Boulevard. 
 
 Up the Merrimack With a Camera. 
 
 Glen Forest in Winter. 
 
 Salisbury Beach in Winter. 
 
 My Camp at Island Pond. 
 
 Den Rock in Winter. 
 
 Canal Street at Noon. 
 
 The Lights Along the Merrimack from the Falls Bridge. 
 
 The Oldest House in Lawrence. 
 
 How Traffic is Regulated on Essex Street. 
 
 A Package I Found. 
 
 The Fire Engine Horses. 
 
 How I Paid for a Broken Window. 
 
EIGHTH GRADE 
 
 When Mother Calls "Get up !" 
 
 How I Lost My Belief in Santa Claus. 
 
 My Paper Route. 
 
 A Busy Corner. 
 
 A Fleet of Ducks on the Spicket. 
 
 The Balloon Man on Circus Day. 
 
 How I Feel When I First Wear a New Suit to School. 
 
 My First Night in a Tent. 
 
 Waiting for the Postman on Christmas Morning. 
 
 How I Made My Collection of Stamps. 
 
 My Yard After a Snow Storm. 
 
 Our Memorial Day Program. 
 
 Sounds on a Cold Winter Morning. 
 
 When the City Awakes. 
 
 Our Garden Toad. 
 
 What I Would Do with Five Dollars. 
 
 How We Made a Fireless Cooker. 
 
 How to Give "First Aid to the Injured". 
 
 How to Make Out a Money Order. 
 
 How to Set an Alarm Clock. 
 
 Why Winter is Better for Fun Than Summer. 
 
 Which Has the Better Time — a Girl or Boy? 
 
 Why I Like "The Christmas Carol". 
 
 The "Newsies" on Election Night 
 
 The Difficulties of Studying at Home. 
 
 My First Ruhher Boots. 
 
 How it Feels to go Barefoot. 
 
 My First Venture in the Surf. 
 
 When I Got Seasick. 
 
 Learning to Dive. 
 
 Practicing My Piano Lesson. 
 
 Seeking the First Mayflowers. 
 
 When the Bluehirds Come. 
 
 The Circus Kitchen. 
 
 Driving the Tent Stakes. 
 
 When the Elephants Go By. 
 
 The Steam Organ. 
 
 A Scene on Election Night. 
 
 Card Day. 
 
 Excitement at a Track Meet. 
 
 The Drudgery of Washing Dishes. 
 
 Spring Hats. 
 
 Staying After School. 
 
 The Spilled Dinner Pail. 
 
 Collecting Voting Cards. 
 
 An Icy Morning. 
 
 How to Ring a Fire Alarm. 
 
 When the Ash Man Comes. 
 
 12/ 
 
128 
 
 EIGHTH GRADE 
 
 Wash Day at Home. 
 
 Cleaning House Time. 
 
 Tricks I Have Taught Our Cat. 
 
 Safety First. 
 
 The World's Series on the Newspaper Bulletins. 
 
 Gas Bill Day. 
 
 The Car Sprinkler. 
 
 The Relay Race. 
 
 IV* Words for Special Spelling- DrilL 
 
 (Review words are printed in italics.) 
 
 almost 
 
 friend 
 
 receive 
 
 anxious 
 
 government 
 
 respectfully 
 
 beginning 
 
 grammar 
 
 separate 
 
 believe 
 
 heard 
 
 sincerely 
 
 business 
 
 judgment 
 
 their 
 
 changing 
 
 knew 
 
 there 
 
 chief 
 
 laughed 
 
 too 
 
 coming 
 
 minute 
 
 tried 
 
 different 
 
 necessary 
 
 truly 
 
 disappeared 
 
 oblige 
 
 using 
 
 disappoint 
 
 principal 
 
 written 
 
 foreign 
 
 really 
 
 
 accept 
 college 
 disease 
 eighth 
 
 excitement 
 finally 
 immediately 
 knowledge 
 
 ninth 
 occasion 
 preferred 
 proceed 
 
 V. Written Standards. 
 
 The Chimney Sweep. 
 A common sight in any large English city is a chimney- 
 sweep. Amid the din of the noisy street may be heard his shrill 
 voice calling "Sweep !, Sweep !" He is clad in overalls and loose 
 jacket, and his face and hands are covered with soot and grime. 
 He carries a ladder, and a brush so constructed as to be made larger 
 or smaller as the size of the flue demands. The brush is attached 
 to a long coil of rope by which it may be lowered into or raised 
 from the chimney. He is not a very welcome visitor to the good 
 house wife, for he brings dirt wherever he goes. 
 
EIGHTH GRADE 
 
 129 
 
 Imitating Grandma. 
 
 A dear little girl sat in a big arm-chair out of all proportion 
 to her size. The little curly head, peeping from a large bonnet 
 looked like a little chicken breaking through an egg-shell. A large 
 pair of spectacles adorned her flat little nose. She was making 
 believe knit, as she had seen her grandma do so often. When I 
 saw her she was all stooped over as if she were trying to pick up 
 a lost stitch, and her two little fat hands worked clumsily at a big 
 stocking. The little girl, bonnet, glasses, and stocking were a good 
 imitation of grandma. 
 
 Sunny Jim. 
 
 A short, fat little man was the landlord, — so fat that he 
 seemed in danger of bursting his clothes. About his ears was a 
 growth of curly hair, but his shiny head was as smooth as a 
 billiard ball. His face was always wreathed in smiles. A pair of 
 kindly blue eyes peered out under white feathery eyebrows. A 
 squat nose occupied the middle of his face, looking as if it had been 
 put on by some bill poster, as it was not exactly straight. Perhaps 
 from constant smiling, the corners of his mouth were slightly 
 turned up. He was the very soul of merriment and good humor. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin. 
 
 This proverbial old gentleman, Benjamin Franklin by name, 
 had a round, full, kindly face. His shoulders were slightly bent 
 from hard work, but his carriage was stately nevertheless. He had 
 a firm mouth and nose, not unlike those of Washington. He was 
 bald in front, but had long flowing locks on the back of his wise 
 old head. His twinkling eyes showed him to be a man of good 
 humor. He wore the clothes of his period, and the day he walked 
 down the street in Philadelphia one could not but think he was a 
 wise old proverb escaped from "Poor Richard's Almanac". 
 
 Excitement in My Neighborhood. 
 
 Last night pedestrians on Newbury Street had a very 
 narrow escape from death. About seven o'clock the trolley wire 
 fell to the street with a snap, a hiss, and a vivid flash of white 
 light. At this moment a car appeared, and a motorman and a 
 conductor stood guard over the wire until, with a clanging of 
 bells and shouting of men, the emergency wagon appeared. To 
 Help out with the excitement a runaway horse charged straight for 
 the wire, but strong hands stopped him in time. 
 
130 
 
 EIGHTH GRADE 
 
 A Rural Village. 
 In the central part of Maine lies the little farming town of 
 Etna, nestled among the hills. The town has its center at the 
 meeting of two roads. Back of it flows a small brook which finds 
 its way into a pond whose quiet waters can be seen behind a 
 fringe of trees. Around the pond is a dense growth of pines, 
 whose odor is strong upon the warm summer air. At the center 
 of the town is the triangular village green, and, close by, the white 
 steepled meeting house and the village school. It is a perfect 
 type of the New England rural village. 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 13* 
 
 APPENDIX L 
 
 Sounds Presenting Difficulty, and Some Exercises Designed to 
 Improve Enunciation and Pronunciation. 
 
 (a) Sounds Presenting Difficulty. 
 
 1. The final g omitted in ing ; comin' instead of coming. 
 
 2. (Dropping final t or d; toV instead of told ; an' instead of and. 
 
 3. Introducing a letter or syllable wrongly, e. g., umbcrclla instead 
 of umbrella. 
 
 4. The two sounds of th, the aspirate and the voiced sound, as in 
 pith and then, are confused. Thus with is made to rhyme 
 with pith. Th becomes t as in t'row for throw. 
 
 5. The letter r is often added when none ought to be heard, as 
 "I saw-r a ship". 
 
 6. Careful attention should be given to the proper pronunciation 
 of the vowel u as in Tuesday, duty. 
 
 7. th is often pronounced as d or t — as found in dem for them or 
 tree for three. 
 
 (b) Some Difficulties Met by Foreign Children. 
 The foreign -born child has special difficulties in pronun 
 ciation. The following are the most common: 
 
 1. Mispronunciation of ng, final and medial. Final wg (as in "sing" 
 or any present participal) is frequently pronounced as nk. Medial 
 ng is frequently mispronounced ; e. g., "singing" is pronounced 
 *'sing-ing". "Finger" is sometimes mispronounced as "fing-er", 
 "single" as "sing-le", "linger" as "ling-er", "hanger" as 
 "hang-ger", "anger" as "ang-er", "bringer" as "bring-ger", etc., 
 and "len'th" and "stren'th" are heard for "length" and 
 "strength". 
 
 2. s and sh are apt to be improperly vocalized, becoming s and zh ; 
 as "acid" becomes "azid", "creases" becomes "creazes", "assure" 
 becomes "azhure", etc. On the other hand, many say "wass" for 
 "was", "whereass" for "whereas", etc. 
 
 3. The most common mispronunciation of vowels is the confounding 
 of the sounds of oi and er; by which "oil" becomes "earl", 
 "join" becomes "jern", "oyster" becomes "erster", etc. 
 
132 
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 (c) Words Commonly Mispronounced. 
 
 The following words illustrate some of the sounds that are 
 troublesome, or which people are too lazy to bring out clearly. 
 The teacher can add many words to the list. 
 
 arctic 
 
 elm 
 
 new 
 
 again 
 
 every 
 
 often 
 
 athlete 
 
 fellow 
 
 overalls 
 
 attacked 
 
 general 
 
 perhaps 
 
 asked 
 
 geography 
 
 pillow 
 
 been 
 
 govern 
 
 poem 
 
 business 
 
 government 
 
 poetry 
 
 catch 
 
 grocery 
 
 potato 
 
 cemetery 
 
 height 
 
 recognize 
 
 children 
 
 history 
 
 strength 
 
 chimney 
 
 hollow 
 
 studied 
 
 deaf 
 
 hundred 
 
 sword 
 
 delivery 
 
 jaw 
 
 though 
 
 depths 
 
 jewelry 
 
 thought 
 
 different 
 
 kept 
 
 through 
 
 discovery 
 
 law 
 
 tomorrow 
 
 drawing 
 
 length 
 
 usually 
 
 drowned 
 
 library 
 
 yellow 
 
 eleven 
 
 machinery 
 
 
 (d) Suggested Drills. 
 Drill on words and phrases like the following can be made 
 very helpful : 
 
 Sleep, sleek, sleet, sleeve. 
 
 Twelfth, breadth, length, depth, strength, width. 
 
 Particularly, especially, certainly. 
 
 Just, worst, crust, finest, youngest, greatest, breakfast. 
 
 Kindness, goodness, helpless, thoughtless, careless. 
 
 Give me, let me, was he, I don't know, don't you, at all. 
 
 Whittle, whistle, wheel, white, when, whether, which. 
 
 Would you, could you, did you, can you, had you. 
 
 This one, that one, which one, let her go, let him do it. 
 
 (e) In General. 
 
 Give drill lessons to correct faults of enunciation, until the 
 pupils form the habit of avoiding the faults in ordinary speech. 
 Show the proper position and use of the necessary organs of 
 speech involved in the production of the correct sound. 
 Pronounce slowly, enunciate clearly and distinctly. With foreign 
 children sound is of greater importance than the form in the 
 beginning. 
 
APPENDIX I t ^ 
 
 Give special attention to ear-training. 
 
 Train the pupils to listen carefully to the teacher, to watch her 
 
 speak, and to imitate her. 
 
 Insist all the time upon careful enunciation, exact enunciation 
 
 — no "winders'', no ''wan ters", or "saw 'im", no '"yeh's" or 
 
 "yep's" for "yes". 
 
134 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 APPENDIX II. 
 
 Selected Language Games, with an Analysis of the Common 
 Errors in the Speech of Children. 
 
 An Analysis of The Common Errors in Children's Speech. 
 
 An inventory of the prevailing errors in the speech of 
 children is a necessary preliminary to any rational attempt to 
 improve the speech of children. Such an investigation was 
 recently made in a school system comprising 3500 pupils. The 
 teachers were requested to note the language errors of their 
 pupils, and to classify them as verb-errors, double negatives, 
 mispronunciations that could be consistently classed as language 
 errors, misuse of pronouns, adverbial errors, and colloquialisms. 
 
 The total number of mistakes observed, classified, and ex- 
 pressed in percents are given here : 
 
 First Grade Eighth Grade All Grades 
 
 1. Verb-errors 49-5 36.6 40.1 
 
 2. Double Negatives 3-6 2.9 3.4 
 
 3. Mispronunciation 16.8 17.3 20.4 
 
 4. Misuse of Pronouns 18.8 18.3 17.2 
 
 5. Adverbial Errors 5.3 6.9 58 
 
 6. Colloquialisms 8.2 13.3 12.9 
 
 It will be seen from the above that : 
 
 (1) The range of errors is small. The poor English 
 lieard is due to frequent repetition of a few errors. 
 
 (2) The percentage of each class of error is relatively 
 constant for all grades. 
 
 (3) This is evidence that persistent and organized effort 
 was not made to eliminate the errors. The task, before it was 
 analyzed, seemed so complex and hopeless, that teachers' efforts 
 were scattered and futile. 
 
APPENDIX II 
 
 135 
 
 (4) The verb errors form a very large percentage of the 
 total errors in each grade. 
 
 (5) Of the verb forms, almost one half (see analysis 
 below) are due to confusing the past tense and perfect 
 participle. A dozen verbs form the bulk of the errors. 
 
 A further analysis of the verb-errors brought out the 
 following facts : 
 
 (a) Confusing past tense and perfect participles occasioned 
 nearly 50% of the verb-errors. 
 
 (b) Mistakes in past tense and perfect participle of "see", 
 "come", "do", and "go" represented one-tenth of all the errors 
 scored. 
 
 (c) Nine other verbs caused 6^2% of all the errors. 
 
 (d) If children could be taught to use correctly the past 
 tense and perfect participle of thirteen verbs, one-sixth of all 
 the errors made by these children could be eliminated. 
 
 An analysis of the common errors in the speech of the 
 Lawrence school children would probably result in figures very 
 similar to those that have been quoted. That is, about half 
 the errors would be found to be those of verb forms, and a half 
 of this half the result of misusing the forms of the past tense 
 and the past participle. The preponderence of verb-errors is 
 readily explained by the much more frequent use of the verb 
 than of the other words open to misuse — like the pronoun and 
 the adverb. The proportion of errors in the other items of 
 the analysis would in all probability be found to approximate 
 very closely to that revealed by the investigation here described. 
 Human nature is much the same everywhere, and it has no 
 more common expression than the manner in which it abuses 
 the English language. 
 
 Formal Language Games. 
 
 One of the most successful means of correcting bad 
 language forms in the primary grades and establishing right 
 habits of speech, is the formal language game. In these the 
 
136 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 child is unconscious of. the ultimate aim of the teacher, though 
 fully aware of the fact that a certain form must be used in 
 order that the game be won. The teacher, however, is more suc- 
 cessful with results than if she were to explain her intentions. 
 She secures the functioning of language at the very time it is 
 needed. The drill is not something wholly apart. It is inter- 
 esting, because of the activity. Repetition is called forth by a 
 natural situation, and the desired expression is in the focus 
 of the child's attention. 
 
 A few games that have proved very successful in the class- 
 room are given as illustrations of the idea. The resourceful 
 teacher will invent as many more as she will need. 
 
 Drill 1. 
 
 Throw, Threw — Catch, Caught. 
 
 Have two lines of pupils standing opposite each other. 
 
 Consider children in their seats as spectators. 
 
 One child throws the ball to the opposite, and says : 
 
 "I throw the ball." (or) "I am throwing the ball." 
 
 The other child says : 
 
 "I catch the ball." (or) "I am catching the ball." 
 
 Ask child in seat: "What did he do?" 
 
 "He threw the ball." 1 
 
 "He caught the ball." r Spectators tell this. 
 
 "He dropped the ball." * 
 
 The teacher throws the ball, and asks : 
 
 "What am I doing?" 
 
 "What did I do?" 
 
 Drill 2. 
 
 "It Isn't." 
 
 Leader. "I've thought of a word that rhymes with door." 
 
 Jimmie. "Is it part of any apple?" 
 
 Leader. "No, it isn't 'core'." 
 
 Ethel. "Is it what I did to my dress?" 
 
 Leader. "No, it isn't 'tore'." 
 
 Jean. "Is it what lions do?" 
 
 Leader. "Yes, it is 'roar'." 
 
 Now Jean, the successful, "thinks of a word" and the 
 guessing continues by definitions. 
 
APPENDIX II J37 
 
 This game never fails to give pleasure. Ideas struggle for 
 expression in comprehensible definitions and the rhythmic formula 
 
 "No, it isn't " repeated again and again makes the correct 
 
 verb form pleasantly familiar. 
 
 Drill 3. 
 
 Drill on Use of "Saw". 
 Place a number of objects on teacher's desk. 
 
 Have a row of children pass the desk, and tell what they saw. 
 Limit them to the number of objects they must tell, by saying: 
 
 "You may tell two objects." 
 "You may tell three objects." 
 
 The next child may tell four objects. 
 Look out for careful placing of "and". 
 
 "I saw a cap." (Not "sorra cap.") 
 
 "I saw a cap and a book." 
 
 "I saw a bonk, a marble, a top and a ball." 
 
 In like manner : 
 
 take — took 
 
 find — found 
 
 bring to me — brought 
 
 Drill 4. 
 
 Polite Use of "I". 
 
 Teacher. "Mary and Alice may walk across the room." 
 Teacher. "Mary, tell me what you and Alice did." 
 Mary. "Me and Alice walked across the room." 
 Alice. "I and Mary walked across the room." 
 Teacher. "The polite way is to name Mary first." 
 Alice. "Mary and I walked across the room." 
 Teacher. "Alice told me very nicely. Mary, you tell me." 
 Other corrections may be taken up in this way. 
 
 Drill 5. 
 
 It is I. ft is He. It is She. 
 
 A child stands in the corner blindfolded. Another pupil stands 
 beside him not blindfolded. A third child steps up and taps the first 
 one on the back. Number one says, "Who is it?" The child who 
 did the tapping says, "It is I". The blindfolded pupil then gives 
 the name of the child he thinks it is. If he guesses correctly, the 
 pupil not blindfolded says. "It is he", or "It is she". If not, he says. 
 "It is not she", or "It is not he". "It is not Miss " 
 
138 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 Drill 6. 
 
 Drill on: "I seen it"; "he done it"; "''me and him"; ''I got it 
 off him" ; etc. 
 
 Hold up a book or pencil. Ask these questions of different 
 pupils: "What do you see?" "What did he see?" "What has he 
 seen?" "What have they seen?" "What did they see?" "The 
 answers to these questions and many more of the same type will 
 call for the correct use of see, saw, seen. 
 
 "What did John and you see?" "What did he and you see?" 
 These questions call for answers with the correct use of "he and I". 
 
 "Mary, get a ruler from Annie." "From whom did you get 
 the ruler?" "From whom did Mary get the ruler?" This may 
 be continued calling on different children and making use of 
 different objects. "Where did you get it?" "Where did I, he, she, 
 we, they get it?" The answers to questions of this sort will teach 
 the children to use from instead of off. 
 
 Drill 7- 
 
 Drill on "I haven't any," or e ''I have no" 
 
 "You may tell me about some things which you haven't." 
 "If you haven't a book, how would you tell me?" 
 ''I haven't any book." 
 "Tell it another way." 
 "I have no book." 
 
 'I haven't any ink." ''I have no ink." 
 
 T haven't any pen." "I have no pen." 
 
 T haven't a paper." "I have no paper." 
 
 T haven't a crayola." "I have no crayola." 
 
 Drill 8. 
 Correct verb forms. 
 
 "John, go to the closet, get a ruler, and put it on Mary's 
 desk." 
 
 "Tell me what you did." 
 
 "I went to the closet, got a ruler, and put it on Mary's 
 desk." 
 
 "Mary, go to my desk, get two pencils, an eraser, and a key, 
 and give them to Miss " 
 
 "Tell ire what you did." 
 
 "I went to your desk, got two pencils, an eraser, and a key, 
 and gave them to Miss " 
 
APPENDTX II 
 
 Drill 9- 
 
 I3 l J 
 
 Drill on "May 1?" for -Can 1?" 
 Drill on wrong use of "Please." 
 
 'Miss may I change my seat?" 
 
 'Miss may I go home at eleven o'clock' 
 
 'Miss may I have another paper?" 
 
 'Miss may I have a book?" 
 
 'Miss may I leave the room?" 
 
 'Miss may I close the window ?" 
 
 Drill io. 
 
 Use of "Isn't". 
 
 Have a list of words on board. A child steps out of the 
 room, while one of the class goes to the board and selects a word. 
 Then the first child comes in. and points to the word he thinks the 
 boy selected, and asks : 
 
 "Is it "every"?" 
 "No, it isn't "every"." 
 "Yes, it is "every"." 
 
 Make use of this game to fix the pronunciation of trouble- 
 some words and phrases in their minds, such as three, two, from, 
 against, through, I had to, this afternoon, etc. 
 
 Drill ii. 
 Game of Fortune Telling. — Correct use of 'saw". 
 
 To play this game the class should be divided into fortune 
 seekers and fortune tellers. On the teacher's desk should be many 
 pieces of paper, each having a picture on the under side ; the upper 
 side should be blank. 
 
 Each fortune seeker in turn should go to the desk, take a 
 paper, peep at the under side, and then, turning to a fortune 
 teller, say what he saw. The fortune teller should at once tell the 
 seeker's fortune. Thus: If a fortune seeker should say, "I saw a 
 ship," the fortune teller should say, "You will be a sailor". 
 
 The following suggestions will help in the beginning, but the 
 teacher and pupils should be able to think of other pictures and 
 fortunes. 
 
 "I saw a club." "You will be a policeman." 
 
 "I saw a hat." "You will be a milliner." 
 
 "I saw a ladder." "You will be a fireman." 
 
 "I saw an automobile." "You will be a chauffeur." 
 
140 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 Drill 12. 
 
 A Group of Similar Games. 
 
 Game i. This game is like a spelling match. The teacher 
 gives out the following words, one by one : 
 
 a bubble a tulip a riddle 
 
 a potato a whistle a wagon 
 
 a lesson a picture a kite 
 
 a bean bag a ball a flag 
 
 a horn a leaf an answer 
 
 The pupil whose turn it is, should reply instantly, choosing 
 the most fitting answer from the following sentences. It is a 
 failure to hesitate or to give the wrong answer : 
 
 I grew it. I blew it. I flew it. 
 
 I threw it. I drew it. I knew it. 
 
 Game 2. For another game, the teacher may give out the 
 same words, and the pupil whose turn it is may respond instantly 
 with one of the following questions : 
 
 "Have you ever known one?" 
 
 "Have you ever blown one?" 
 
 "Have you ever shown one?" 
 
 "Have you ever flown one?" 
 
 "Have you ever thrown one?" 
 
 "Have you ever grown one?" 
 
 Game 3. Make up a similar one for the class to play, using 
 these words : 
 
 bought caught 
 
 thought taught 
 
 fought brought 
 
 Game 4. A similar game may be made, using the following 
 sentences, only there will be no rhyming words in it : 
 
 I saw it. I ate it. I said it. 
 
 I did it. I lost it. I showed it. 
 
 I chose it. I took it. I strung it. 
 
 I wrote it. I gave it. I spun it. 
 
 I broke it. I sang it. I hid it. 
 
 I tore it. I shook it. I bit it. 
 
 I wore it. I swung it. T wove it. 
 
 I stuck it. I rang it. 
 
 I drove it. I dug it. 
 
APPENDIX II I4I 
 
 Drill 13. 
 
 Use of "Doesn't". 
 
 "Tell me some things your mother doesn't do ; your father ; 
 your teacher; a squirrel; a robin:" 
 
 "My mother doesn't talk English." 
 "My mother doesn't work in the mill." 
 "My mother doesn't start the fire." 
 "My mother doesn't chop wood." 
 "My mother doesn't like dirty boys." 
 
142 
 
 APPENDIX III 
 
 APPENDIX III. 
 
 STANDARD LETTER FORMS. 
 
 These are the letter forms adopted for use in the Boston Public 
 
 Schools in 1914, upon the recommendation of the Department 
 
 of Educational Measurement* 
 
APPENDIX III 
 
 THE FRIENDLY LETTER. 
 
 316 Summit Street, 
 
 Pomona, Cal., 
 September 2, 1913. 
 Dear Marion, 
 
 Mother and I reached home yesterday after our visit 
 of three months in the East. Although we had a pleasant 
 time with our relatives in Maine and Massachusetts, we 
 are glad to be at home once more. 
 
 The peaches and plums are ripe now, and we spend 
 all day on the ranch helping the men gather the crop. 
 I wish that you could be here to help eat our peaches, 
 but I suppose you are enjoying your good Massachusetts 
 apples. 
 
 Give my love to your mother and write soon. 
 
 Your loving friend, 
 
 Helen Garland. 
 
 THE BUSINESS LETTER. 
 
 321 Beacon Street, 
 Boston. Mass.. 
 
 January 20, 1914. 
 Charles Lowell & Company, 
 36 State Street, 
 
 Boston, Mass. 
 Dear Sirs : 
 
 In reply to your advertisement in today's "Herald" 
 for a clerk in your office, I wish to submit my application. 
 I am fourteen years of age and am a graduate of 
 the Prospect School-. My report card shows my standing 
 in arithmetic and spelling. This letter is a specimen of 
 my handwriting. 
 
 I refer to Mr. John L. Stevens, the principal of the 
 Prospect School, and to Rev. George Chase, 25 Wilson 
 Road, Boston. 
 
 Trusting that you will consider my application favor- 
 ably. I am, 
 
 Respectfully yours. 
 
 Richard H. Williams. 
 
 1 4.5 
 
1 44 
 
 APPENDIX III 
 
 Arrangement of Letter. 
 
 The heading should be at least one inch from the top of 
 the paper. 
 
 The heading and also the complimentary close should begin 
 near the middle of the line. 
 
 Each line after the first in the heading and in the compli- 
 mentary close should begin a little farther to the right than 
 the preceding line. 
 
 There should be a margin of one-half inch on the left side 
 of the note paper. 
 
 A paragraph margin should be twice the regular margin. 
 
 The complimentary close should begin with a capital and 
 should be followed by a comma. 
 
 Model Form for Addressing Envelope. 
 
 Miss Marion L. Brown, Charles Lowell and Company, 
 
 14 Prospect Street, 36 State Street, 
 
 Reading, Mass. Boston, Mass. 
 
 Directions for Envelope. 
 
 1. Use ink in addressing letters or other mail matter. 
 
 2. Write plainly the name of the person addressed, street 
 and number, post office and state. 
 
 3. Place your name and address in the upper left hand 
 corner of the envelope or package. 
 
 4. The name of the person addressed should be written 
 in about the middle of the envelope and with about as much 
 space at the right as at the left, and each following line of the 
 superscription should begin an even distance at the right of the 
 preceding line. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 021 729 908 1 # 
 
 DICK & TRUMPOLD. 
 ICE, MASSACHUSETTS.