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CHAPTER XXIII.

PROPER RECITATION BALANCE.

SUGGESTED READINGS.

TEACHER TRAINING. Roads.

pp. 90-92.

CHARACTER BUILDING. Coler. pp. 123-127.
SUNDAY SCHOOL SCIENCE. Holmes. pp. 28-33.
HOW TO CONDUCT THE RECITATION. McMurray.
How To PLAN THE LESSON. Brown.

*PRIMER ON TEACHING, THE RECITATION. Adams.

The Right Method of Conducting the Recitation.

1. First of all, secure Order, the very moment you enter the Class Form, not ten minutes later, after the spirit of unrest has swept through the scholars.

2. Attack some educational subject of general interest, that will hold the attention of the pupils until the school has formally opened. With a progressive teacher and ambitious, wide-awake children, this advance topic, the one most interesting, uppermost in the minds of the children, eager themselves for it, will be the Lesson itself. It will be the reverse of a certain class, conducted by a "wise young man" in a large city on the St. Lawrence, who persuaded his boys to come regularly to Sunday School, and preserve order, on condition that the Lesson lasted no longer than fifteen minutes, and the rest of the period be devoted to general "talk" on baseball and kindred topics. Granted that there is place for baseball, and many like subjects, between the teacher and his pupils; yet the place is not the Sunday School Lesson Period. It may be previous to or after that time; or better still in friendly, personal, social fellowship with the teacher during the week (the ideal condition of personal interest in pupils).

According to Professor See: "The wise teacher will not

exhaust the subject in hand and will leave avenues of interest to be followed out by the student."

Adams remarks: "The interesting person supplies the premises, but he leaves his hearers to draw their own conclusions. That is their share-a share that they enjoy, but your dull man does not spare a single detail."

In Roark's PSYCHOLOGY IN EDUCATION, it puts it thus: "No good teaching without attention; no attention without interest; no interest without objects. And the argument holds good for all grades of students, from the Kindergarten to the University. The University of to-day has 'object lessons' in almost every department of study, as witness the splendidly equipped laboratories, museums, maps, pictures, etc., that are in daily use. No teacher of a country school should for a minute think that he can teach well without illustrative material any more than the professor of chemistry can without a laboratory. It is only necessary to remember that the apparatus must be adapted to the pupils' ability and advancement, and to the subject of instruction."

3. In commencing to teach the lesson, consciously look out for the Point of best Contact, which will seldom be the same. It may even be determined by certain local, secular happenings during the week, which form an entrée to general interest.

4. Proceeding then from the Known to the Unknown, deliberately take up the Preparation or Introduction of the Lesson, using broad, sweeping Opening Questions, linking the new Topic to the former Chapters in the Series. The Aim of the new Lesson should be clearly presented. It holds Attention and Curiosity.

The following suggestions on CONVERSATIONAL POWERS were written by Miss Flora Elmer: "By the time the children have reached the fifth grade, expect a great deal of topical work. After we have finished our study of the Amazon river, I expect a child to tell a great deal about it. Perhaps the first pupil called upon may rise and say: "The Amazon rises in the Andes, flows east, and empties into the Atlantic ocean.' Then he may hesitate, look about and expect me to ask ten or twelve questions before I can pump everything out of him that he knows about the Amazon. Which latter action we are prone to call 'leading

out a child.' The time comes when every child must be able to stand on his own feet and tell what he knows. I often make this remark: 'Who can talk five minutes on the Amazon river?' Perhaps the first effort will give me a one-minute recitation, and the next, two, which will generally satisfy me. It isn't, you will understand, the time he speaks, but the fact that he has learned to tell what is in his own mind-unburdened his soul, and poured out all he knows on the subject under consideration. At all times insist on complete sentences, whether the lesson be language, writing, arithmetic, or singing. Thus language is correlated with the other subjects in the curriculum."

5. Present the New Lesson, using Leading and Subsidiary Questions, drawing out first the personal contributions of the Pupils' own study and research, rather than contributing your own investigation. Use Illustrations to clarify their misunderstandings; question further to make sure of their full comprehension; have a clear, perspicuous outline or skeleton, which will bind the parts of the Lesson clearly and coherently together; secure frequent subsidiary Reviews each few minutes, gathering together loose, disjointed ends; rouse animated Class Discussions on live topics, but do not let them lead off from the main subject nor consume undue proportion of time to the neglect of the general subject; fix the new Ideas firmly in Memory by Review, by Repetition (both from the children and by yourself); hang them on the pegs of some vivid Illustration (story, picture, object); seek to obtain practical Doing during the week of the truths and principles developed, as well as a Report on the Doing-side of the former lessons; avoid Fatigue, watching closely to see when Interest commences to flag, and then changing the mode of Presentation or perchance the Topic; and finally bind the whole Lesson together by a rapid Review of all the Points made, and Application of them in general, though it is to be remembered that not every lesson need necessarily have a "moral" stated. Very often the stating of an obvious moral spoils the entire point of it, and irritates the pupils who are not stupid.

Review Steps.

Three progressive steps are involved in the reviewing of a lesson: a repetition of it, a second view or viewing again of it,

and a new view of it. The repetition of it may be, to a certain extent, mechanical. The second view of it, or a viewing again of it, may comprehend simply those elements which were recognized in the first view or original learning of the lesson. This is valuable. The new view of it, however, seeing it in new aspects and relations, is by far the most important phase of reviewing.

Gregory says that the best teachers give about one-third of each lesson hour to reviews. Another has said that if one-half the teaching time were thus to be spent there would be a gain. The review is pre-eminently the student's exercise. Here, above all other places, the lesson should not degenerate into a lecture by the teacher.

The reviews should be prepared by the teachers and students as carefully as the original lesson. Of the methods of conducting the lesson in the class-room there are four that should have special attention. They may be designated roughly as the lecture, the seminar, the recitation or topic, and the question or

conversational method.

The lecture method. By this method the teacher proceeds with an orderly and, for the most part, uninterrupted presentation of the thought of the lesson. This method calls for little or no preparation in advance by the student.

The seminar method. By this method the members of the class are assigned topics in the line of which they make original investigations and report their findings to the class, instead of being called upon to make recitations from specified portions of books. It is almost needless to add that this method used exclusively is only suited to more mature students and those with trained minds, although with older boys and young men it is possible to make such original investigation an incidental feature of class work.

The recitation or topic method. By this method the student is expected to prepare stated lessons from a text book and to present what he has learned by topics as they are called for by the teacher.

The Question or Conversational method. By this method, after careful preparation by the teacher and student, the former elicits the knowledge that the student has of the subject in as

orderly a fashion as possible by a series of questions, often resulting in the play of conversation between teacher and student.

In Gregory's SEVEN LAWS OF TEACHING, it says: "It is only the unskilful and self-seeking teacher who prefers to hear his own voice in endless talk, rather than watch the working of his pupils' thoughts.

"The chief and almost constant violation of this law of teaching is the attempt to force lessons into the pupil's mind by simply telling. 'I have told you ten times, and yet you don't know!' exclaimed a teacher of this sort."

Balancing Recitation with Instruction.

Dr. Roads has an entire chapter dealing with this subject, a comparison that few teachers stop to think of. The mention of it, therefore, will be of value. He says, rightly, that under our present inane system we have almost all the time given to Instruction, with little or no Home Study and therefore small amount of Recitation; while in the Day School this condition is precisely reversed. Therefore the Sunday School has become too far a pouring-in process. This is working to the manifest disparagement of the Sunday School, which is despised in the eyes of the bright Public School child.

Therefore, wisely balance Instruction with Recitation. Demand, expect, and enforce Home Study. Secure definite Recitation of the assigned task. See that the reproduction and elucidation of the set stint of Home Work be not displaced by the needful Class Discussion. How to Secure Balance.

1. Assign for definite Home Study all within the range of the children's time, books, comprehension. Exercise and cultivate their own mental powers. Let them "pick their own brains, before coming to pick yours."

2. Have each scholar make particular note of difficulties, inquiries, doubts, questions, etc., he finds arising, and which he himself cannot meet. If he come across a specially new and illuminating discovery, let him contribute it to the class.

3. Instruction, new knowledge, should be the bait to the class, the prize that brings them there. There are, if the teacher be enthusiastic, "seekers after Truth," and the teacher knows

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