Read Ebook: Reading: How to Teach It by Arnold Sarah Louise

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Perhaps she reads to them a story which they like, a new story which they have never heard. When she reaches the interesting climax she pauses to say, "I haven't time to read the rest of the story now. How I wish you could read! Then you might take the book and read the story yourselves. Would you not like to learn to read, so that you could read stories like these?"

In Hugh Miller's graphic description of his childhood experience in reading, this element of purpose and desire is strongly emphasized. "The process of learning and acquiring had been a dark one," he says, recalling his struggles with letters and syllables. He "slowly mastered" these "in humble confidence in the awful wisdom of the schoolmistress, not knowing whither it tended," when his mind "awoke to the meaning of that most delightful of all narratives, the story of Joseph. Was there ever such a discovery made before?"

Such testimony might be repeated a thousand times over, by our pupils of to-day--if they were able to describe their common experience.

It was the first vision of the goal that gave meaning, motive, and conscious gladness to Hugh Miller's study. Such motive and such meaning should pervade the earliest lessons in reading, and should be consciously recognized by pupil as well as teacher. We repeat, then: the teacher's first effort, after becoming acquainted with her children, is to awaken this conscious desire to read, and to secure intelligent co?peration in her exercises.

One teacher suggests writing upon the board some sentence which has been whispered to her by the children, and then calling an older child from another room to read the secret. This is done again and again, until the children are eager to share the power which their comrade possesses, and turn gladly to the tasks required of them, that they may the sooner reach their goal.

There is a wide difference between such teaching and the routine drill which does not enlist the child's desire. The enthusiastic bicyclist would smile if asked to exchange his morning ride to the city for an hour's exercise upon a fixed "bicycle exerciser" in the back hall. Nor could the most skilful pedagogue convince him that the exercise involved in making the wheel go round is as valuable as the spin which carries him to his destination, through the fresh morning air, along roads bordered with flowered fields. Yet the contrast is no more marked than that between the task of the syllable-pronouncer, who obediently performs his meaningless labor, and that of the child who, with conscious and earnest desire, sets himself to learn to read.

In order to give some sense of immediate achievement, the sentences of the first lessons should express thoughts in which the children are interested.

This is Kate. Kate can read. Kate has a book. Read to me, Kate. Kate can read. I can read, too. Kate has a book. I have a book, too. See Kate's book! See my book! Kate has a doll. I have a doll, too. Kate has a kitty. I have a dog. Kate likes her doll. I like my dog. See my dog! See Kate's little kitty! Come, little Kitty. Come to me, Kitty.

The object of these preparatory lessons is to give some consciousness of the purpose of reading, and some sense of achievement. The sentences are the children's, obtained in a conversation concerning Kate, who is an older pupil, or some pictured child. The sentence is the unit, and is read by the teacher. The children repeat the sentence after her reading.

Such lessons should continue for several weeks, introducing the various dear and oft-seen objects of the child's environment, and the actions with which he has long been familiar. The sentences should be worth reading, and grouped in coherent paragraphs. Drill in recognizing the words should follow the sentence reading, in every day's lesson.

The mastery of words is an essential element in learning to read. Our common mistake is, not that we do such work too well, but that we make it the final aim of the reading lesson, and lead the children to feel that they can read when they are merely able to pronounce words. Perhaps lack of careful attention to the form of words is quite as serious a mistake, for it results in carelessness in reading.

The study of form and of sound should be associated, but attention to sound alone should precede any attempt to master the form as suggesting sound. Children should be taught to recognize and to distinguish sounds, to repeat them accurately, to speak them distinctly, before they are taught to copy the single characters which represent these sounds. To hear, to repeat, to compare, to distinguish sounds, should be the order of the instruction.

Having learned, through the initials, the sounds which various letters represent, the next step will be to analyze monosyllables into their sounds. Select first those containing short vowels, in order to avoid the difficulty of the silent letter. The preliminary drill with the initials will have made this step an easy one to take.

This study of sounds should continue through at least the first five school years. After analyzing any word into its separate sounds, the children should be required to name other known words which resemble the one studied. This will tend to a habit of classification, and will enable the pupil to depend upon himself in his study.

Diacritical marks are a help in mastering new words, if the key words have been studied in connection with the marks. They are needed also in consulting the dictionary for pronunciation. They should be taught only when necessary to the pronunciation. In older classes, after the use of the dictionary becomes necessary, a complete list should be mastered. It is a mistake to insist upon diacritical marking when the children can pronounce accurately without. I remember hearing a teacher chide a pupil for reading a sentence before she had time to mark the vowels, but, since the child could and did read without such help, the marking was evidently unnecessary. It serves as a means to an end, and should be dispensed with when the end can be reached without such artificial aid.

This work may be facilitated by many devices. We have seen classes hunting for new words beginning with a given sound, as eagerly as if they were playing hide-and-seek. Or with the utmost enjoyment they have made lists of words beginning with chosen sounds; or matched pairs of words which rhymed. But their most valuable exercise is that in which the old familiar word of their first vocabulary is made the key which unlocks the new.

A most helpful form of word study, which is suitable for desk work, is making lists of words containing the same sound. It strengthens the habit of classification, and helps in spelling and in the recognition of new words.

For diacritical marks and correct pronunciation, the teacher is referred to the standard dictionaries. It should not be forgotten that the teacher's pronunciation is a guide to the pupil. She needs a quick ear and the careful judgment which will render her a safe guide. The familiar rule should direct her practice: When in doubt, consult the dictionary.

Note the value of this word mastery. The pupil fast becomes independent of the teacher, and ready to master the page for himself. Note, also, that this power becomes his in proportion to the teacher's purpose to make him self-helpful, and her skill in finding the connecting link between the new knowledge and the old.

Two elements of learning to read have been presented here: sentence reading and word mastery. Of the study of the meaning of the words and the development of the power of imagination we shall speak elsewhere.

THE STUDY OF THE LESSON.

In our emphasis of certain phases of the new education, there is a tendency to swing away from the use of the text-book, so that the children depend largely upon the teacher's oral instruction and explanation. It often happens that the teacher, in her zeal, forgets that the growth of the children depends upon their own doing, and imagines that her thought and experience will suffice, without effort on the part of her pupils. This state of affairs exists in the reading class oftener than in any other. Time is often wasted in smoothing out difficulties which never existed as such to the children, and obstacles are explained away before they are recognized by the child as obstacles. Meanwhile the teacher is doing the work and the pupil is losing the opportunity to gain power by wrestling with his little problems himself.

It is essential that even the little children should be taught how to study to the limit of their ability. The study of the reading lesson may be made a most profitable exercise. Too much of the occupation termed study by both pupil and teacher is an indifferent conning of the book, a careless and hurried repetition of the text, or a thoughtless copying; all of which weakens the power of attention, and tends to make the lesson dull and uninteresting. Such loss should be prevented by careful direction of the young student. The study should be at first conducted under the personal guidance of the teacher, for, until the children grow into the power of learning to work by themselves, they need to be taught how to study as well as how to read. The time spent in the preparation of the lesson should be thoughtfully employed, the exercise resulting in helpful habits as well as in increased power.

Before we can teach our pupils how to study their reading lessons, we must have a realizing sense of their difficulties in reading. This means that we must know our children as well as we would have them know their lesson. A successful teacher of little children once told the writer that she allowed her pupils a period for free conversation every day. While they availed themselves of this privilege, she listened, in order to discover in what they were interested and about what subjects they talked freely to one another. Having learned this, she began her language lessons where the children's interest was centred, led them gradually to new interests, and helped them to overcome their limitations.

Some such study of individual children, or at least of the varying classes of children, is indispensable to the teacher who would endeavor to train her pupils to overcome the obstacles in their way. It is vain for her to assume that all classes are alike, and that a mastery of the words at the head of the lesson will properly equip them all for the feat of rendering the thought which the lesson contains. Such easy assumption ends in failure. The children differ in attainment and in experience. We cannot take for granted either knowledge or ignorance on their part. We must study their experience in order to know their limitations and their needs.

A class of children of foreign parentage was engaged in reading a fairy tale which described the adventures of a wee robin on his way to sing a Yule song to the king. Evidently the children were not accustomed to imaginative tales, and, moreover, they had the dimmest possible notions of the wee robin, the gray, greedy hawk, the Yule song, and the king. Their reading was dull, monotonous, and indifferent, accomplished by dint of constant suggestion and explanation on the part of the teacher, and wearisome though patient repetition on the part of the children.

The exercise, though termed reading, was in reality simply a preparation for reading. It would have been greatly improved by a conscious recognition of its import by both teacher and pupils. They were studying the lesson together and aloud. Had it been thoughtfully studied in this way before reading was attempted, both exercises would have been more helpful to the pupils.

This same class was afterwards questioned in regard to home reading. Not one pupil was accustomed to read or to hear reading at home. In few homes were there any books, while story-telling was a practice of which they had never dreamed. Obviously these children had in their home experience a meagre preparation for reading, and the teacher's duty was consequently a double one. In such an instance the reading lesson would be entirely robbed of its value if the proper study of the lesson were omitted.

For preliminary study, therefore, it is well for the teacher to use the period assigned to reading in talking with the class about the lesson, her object being not to tell what she knows, but to discover what the children know or do not know. To this end she will bend a listening ear to all mistakes, not to waive them away, nor to smile at the awkward interpretation, but to see from what limitation they arise. Knowing their source, she can help to correct them by removing the cause. Such attention to the errors or the questions of the children discloses two classes of difficulties: those which the children can overcome by thought or by observation, and others in which the teacher must of necessity furnish the necessary explanation. For example, a class in a primary school read, and with fair expression, the story of "a kid upon the roof of a house that railed at a wolf passing by." The teacher, knowing her class, assumed their ignorance of the meaning of "railed"--was not surprised at the suggestion that "the kid fired a rail at the wolf"--and by her explanation made clear the meaning of the word. She was surprised, however, in the course of the study conversation, to discover that to the majority of the class "kid" stood for little boy. Nothing in the wording of the fable or in the children's experience served to correct the impression. Again the duty devolved upon the teacher.

Obviously, in such cases the children must depend upon the teacher. To withhold aid at the right time is to make the study fruitless and the children indifferent or discouraged. On the other hand, by means of just such united exercises in study the children will learn to measure their own understanding and to point out their own limitations.

Fancy the class, described above, as having been taught to study, and therefore having wrestled alone with the fable. Upon coming to the recitation, some are conscious of their ignorance and say at once, "I do not know what 'railed' means." They have studied to some purpose, have made themselves ready for their teacher's explanation--and for helping themselves by means of the dictionary. The other difficulty presented by the slang use of "kid" would of course fail to present itself to their consciousness.

One result, then, of the preliminary study, with or without the teacher, should be to help the children to discover the "don't know" line; the second should be to enable them to help themselves, if possible. Through careful and conscious study, they may be helped to realize the "sense" of what they read, and to judge for themselves when they fail to get the meaning of the sentence.

From the beginning, the children should be shown that every sentence is an embodiment of a thought, every word having its place in the expression of that thought.

"A saucy robin is eating the ripe cherries in the tree under my window," the children read. The teacher studies with them for a moment. What does the sentence tell them? Who is eating the ripe cherries? What kind of robin? What is he doing? What is he eating? What cherries is he eating? Where is the tree? What word tells us what kind of a robin is eating? What words tell where the cherries are? What word tells who is eating the cherries? Even in primary schools such questioning is valuable, leading the children to realize that the words appear in the sentence, not by chance, but in order to express something; that every word has its work, that not one can be omitted, that a change in a single word changes the thought. Such exercises, thoughtfully conducted, will lead the children to look for the thought in the sentence, and will make its mastery a test of their success. If the sentence does not yield them a thought which they understand, let them question every word until they get its meaning. Thus they learn to recognize the line where their knowledge ends and their ignorance begins.

It is often the case, however, that the difficulty to be overcome is the pupils' inability to pronounce words whose meaning may be familiar. If this is the case, they will need to bring all their knowledge of words to bear upon this new problem. "Sidewalk" is a long word, a new word--no one knows it. The teacher helps, not by pronouncing it and easing the children of their load. No. She says: "That word seems long, but it is very easy. You know the first syllable." Yes, everybody knows "side." "Now, who knows the second? Who can put them together?" The children rejoice in the sense of overcoming. They have gained some power to help themselves. Our teaching should compel as well as invite such thoughtful comparison of the old with the new, should lead the children to use what they have learned, in the mastery of the not learned.

The simplest lessons in preparatory study are thus justified: they lead to a conscious judgment of one's attainment. Study means nothing if it does not lead to this judgment. The power once gained, the pupil is his own best teacher, his own strongest helper. Prize, then, all exercises which lead to this judgment. Instead of saying to the untrained pupil, "Read your lesson ten times," when his present attainment or lack of attainment renders such repetition worse than useless, you will say, "Read the lesson and copy all the words whose meaning you do not know." "Read and copy the words that you cannot pronounce." "Read and copy the sentence that you do not understand." "Read so carefully that you are sure you can read well to the class."

The skilful teacher will think of a hundred devices to advance such study. The test of each device will be, "Does it help to arouse thought? Does it end in thoughtful study?"

Such study is necessary before reading whenever we may assume that the lesson presents any difficulty to the child, unless we prefer that the first oral rendering of the lesson shall be merely a studying aloud.

As a stimulus to, or a test of, study, it may be well to omit the oral reading occasionally, substituting for it an exercise in silent reading, whose thoroughness is tested by questions. After the usual study of the lesson the books are closed and the teacher calls upon the pupils to tell her what they have read. Older pupils may respond by giving the substance of the lesson. Younger children may be tested by more frequent and detailed questions after the reading of short paragraphs.

The above exercise is even more helpful if the children share in the questioning. They read with keener interest if their knowledge is thus put to the test.

Such exercises tend to emphasize to the pupils the truth that their reading is not for itself, but to make them masters of the thoughts expressed in their lessons. It becomes more real, more purposeful, in proportion as this is realized.

In this connection, it may be said that anything which adds purpose to the reading lesson gives motive to study. When pupils are asked to read to the class some selection unknown to the other pupils, they study and read with a zest quite unlike that manifested in the repetition of a worn-out selection which the others already know. For some good end, recognized by himself as worthy, the child reads now. The introduction of opportunities for individual reading, as early as may be, thus proves an incentive to study and a means of rapid advancement. Cuttings from papers and magazines and collections of children's books prove most helpful at this stage, affording a prize for attainment, as well as an evident test of progress.

The foregoing has been written with special reference to beginners in reading. As pupils advance in their grades, the study of the reading becomes even more necessary and may be made the more profitable.

All that has been said of younger readers applies equally to older pupils. The test of the ability to study is the power to judge rightly where the limit of one's knowledge appears.

As soon as the pupil can point out the obstacle which hinders his understanding, he is ready to be taught. A single word, a question, a suggestion from the teacher, removes his difficulty. He recognizes his need and desires help,--therefore listens attentively and intelligently.

At this stage he is enabled, also, to help himself, since he is prepared to use the dictionary and other reference books.

Older students should read with the help of the dictionary. They should, of course, be taught how to use it, just as they are taught to interpret any other book. Its use is discussed at length in another chapter.

LANGUAGE LESSONS AS A PREPARATION FOR READING LESSONS.

Again, the simplest reading lesson develops the fact that, inasmuch as the children's experiences have been varied, their corresponding fund of ideas is widely different. Any new lesson may present ideas entirely foreign to the experience of the children. The words which represent these ideas, therefore, will be unfamiliar. This state of affairs necessitates an act of teaching which should precede the act of reading. For example, a class of city children in the West attempt to read a story which deals with life by the sea. The sounding sea, the rolling waves, the whispering foam, the rugged rocks, the shining sands, the smooth pebbles, the brown seaweed, the white-winged ships, the brave sailors, are unknown quantities to these children--entirely foreign to their experience. Clearly, before they read this lesson, they must know something of the life and scenes which the lesson portrays. The teacher of children who live by the sea is not confronted by the same problem. Her children have played upon the beach, have gathered the many-colored pebbles, have built houses in the wet sand. Ships at sea are as familiar to them as are the clouds, or the birds; while many of them have played upon the decks of their fathers' fishing-boats, and know the ropes and spars even as they know their own homes. These children have had an experience which fills the lesson with meaning. The inland children must be taught in the next best way. Since they cannot go to the sea, at least pictures of the sea may be brought to them. Shells and pebbles, sea-urchins, starfishes, and seaweeds will tell their story of the far-off beaches. Pictures of ships at sea, of rocks lashed by the waves in a storm, will help them to imagine the conditions which their lesson attempts to describe to them. But the wise teacher will make a connecting link, in some fashion, between the experience and interest of the child and the thought suggested by the story. Here, then, is the need of a language lesson which shall introduce or explain the reading lesson, preparing the child for the new thought, or recalling to his mind the almost forgotten experience.

The everyday experience in every city school-room will serve to re?nforce this truth. Many a city child has never looked upon daisies and buttercups. Brooks and fields and trees are outside his little horizon. It is idle to have these children pronounce the words which stand for these objects unless the words call up pictures in their own minds, and this cannot be the case except as they have some experience with the real things. It is not impossible to bring the flowers and the birds and the trees within the experience of the children. No other work which we can ever do for them will tend more to their future happiness and growth; but, aside from that, no other work which we can do for them will contribute so generously to their growth in reading power. They cannot get the thought from the page unless the words stand for something at least akin to their own experience, and our first efforts must begin by occasioning the experience which is necessary to the interpretation of the printed page. As a means to good reading, then, language lessons are necessary for the purpose of developing ease of expression and freedom from self-consciousness, and leading to knowledge which will serve as a basis for the new thought contained in the lesson.

The subjects introduced in the earliest language lessons should be those with which children are ordinarily familiar. All country children are somewhat acquainted with the common animals: the rabbit, squirrel, cat, dog, cow, mouse, etc. They know something of the occupations of the people around them. They have watched the sunrise and sunset. They have seen the boughs of the trees waving in the wind. They have been awakened by the birds in the morning. They have cared for pet animals at home. Many city children have had something of this experience. All need to have it. In every lesson where these subjects are introduced, the teacher should be assured that the children already know something about them. A short conversation may suffice where the objects are already familiar; where they are strange, careful lessons should be arranged. The cat, rabbit, dog, squirrel, or mouse, can be brought to the school-room, cared for, observed, studied, discussed. These language lessons will not only give the children the knowledge necessary for understanding the lessons, but they will endow the subject with new interest, and add to the reading a sense of reality. Children who have been observing the squirrel will read with great zest the lessons which reaffirm what their eyes have seen, or answer the questions which they have asked, or tell some story which adds to the interest already evoked. The reading thus becomes an expression of the child's actual experience or interest. It is no longer a something which he does simply because he is told. He sees at once the fruit of his labors. He reaches a goal which seems desirable from a child's point of view. He recognizes the purpose and meaning of the story, and works to dig out the message which the sentences contain for him. Everything which serves to make the lesson real to the child's experience, makes a permanent addition to his reading power.

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