COURSE OF STUDY.
FIRST GRADE.
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Drawing— Straight and curved lines applied to familiar objects.
- Text-book— Reader.
- Apparatus— Slate, pencil, sponge, rule.
Correlation.— Let the new words in reading be used in the language work and in spelling. 'This repetition of words deepens the impression and they are thus more easily memorized.
READING.
Purpose.— To teach to gather thought from the printed page.
All reading consists in forming ideas and thoughts occasioned by the printed or written words, and thoughts occasioned the printed or written words; and the work divides into primary, intermediate, and advanced reading. The plan includes, first preparation of the pupil by the use of language lessons, talks about familiar objects, etc.; second, much practice in reading requiring the formation of ideas by the use of language. An essential to silent reading is a clear understanding of what is read.
Preparatory:—
Before beginning this subject, at least two weeks should be devoted to developing the perceptive faculties of pupils. Many children upon entering school have little notion of any formal way of doing things. They now enter upon a new field, and it is the teacher’s duty to acquaint the beginners with their own abilities.
When the child enters school he has from four hundred to one thousand words as his spoken vocabulary. These words he knows by sound, but the time has now come when the eye should be trained so that certain marks with chalk or ink shall present to his mind the same concepts presented by the known sounds. In the first years of school every effort of the teacher should have in constant view the education of the eye, the ear, the hand. To this end the following exercises are suggested:
For the Eye,
1. Call attention to some object or picture in the room and allow each pupil to tell what he sees. The following objects will furnish material for many lessons: flowers fruit, clock, table, doll, desk, stove, silver dollar, etc.
