Reading How to Teach It

m the beginning, but the teacher must, and the constant recognition of the de sired object must influence her simplest lesson. These pages are written in the hope of help ing teachers to appreciate the true import of the familiar task. They attempt to interpret and to dignify the commonplace routine They have grown out of thoughtful experience, and are sent forth with good will, to their service. SARA LOUISE ARNOLD. Boston Mass , 1899. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. WHY Do WE READ . . . 9 II. LITERATURE IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM . 25 III, LEARNING TO READ . ,45 IV. THE STUDY OF THE LESSON . . 87 V. LANGUAGE LESSONS AS A PREPARA TION FOR READING LESSONS . 105 VI. EXPRESSION IN READING . .117 VII. LESSONS TO SUGGEST PLANS OF WORK 139 VIIL LESSONS TO SUGGEST PLANS OF WORK CONTINUED . . .157 IX. THE STUDY OF PICTURES . .185 X. HINTS FOR READING LESSONS . 199 XL THE USE OF THE LIBRARY . . 223 XII. A LIST OF BOOKS . . . .251 XIII. A LIST OF POEMS . . . .273 Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all citril countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hidden and inacces sible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette but the thought that they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age. We owe to books those general benefits which come from high intellectual ac tion. Thus, I think, we often owe to them the perception of immortality. They impart sym pathetic activity to the moral power. Go with mean people, and you think life is mean. Then read Plutarch, and the world is a proud place, peopled with men of positive quality, with heroes and demi-gods standing around us, who will not let us sleep. Then they ad- dress the imagination only poetry inspires poetry. They become the organic culture oj the time. College education is the reading of certain books which the common sense of all scholars agrees will represent the science al ready accumulated. In the highest civiliza tion, the book is still the highest delight. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. READING HOW TO TEACH IT. CHAPTER I. WHY DO WE READ THE power to read is so ordinary a part of our mental equipment that we rarely question its meaning or its ori gin. All common things pass us unchal lenged, however marvellous they may be. We take little note of our sunrises and sunsets, the hill range which we see every day from our window, the clear air which infuses new energies into our lives with every new morning. Com mon institutions, however precious the io Reading How to Teach It. home, the school, the church, the state are received by us as a matter of course, just as children receive without surprise the most valuable gifts from the hands of their friends. We need not marvel, then, that this power, which has so long been a part of ourselves, should remain unquestioned, or that we learn to read wifhout giving a thought to the motive which impels us to learn. It may be well for even the most thoughtful among us to pause for a moment to question why everybody learns to read to pon der the returns from the effort, the time, and the pains spent in the mastery of the art. It is evident that our estimate of the value of reading will depend upon our kind of reading or, in other words, the kind of knowledge which we gain froig reading... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.