Chapter I: Front Matter

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READING: HOW TO TEACH IT.

W. M. Hunt.]

READING: HOW TO TEACH IT

by

SARAH LOUISE ARNOLD

Supervisor of Schools, Boston, Mass., and author of “Stepping Stones to Literature,” “Waymarks for Teachers,” etc.

Silver, Burdett and Company Boston New York Chicago

Copyright, 1899 by Silver, Burdett and Company

_GREETING._

_The teacher of children must know how to guide her work so that the seemingly trivial beginnings shall tend toward a goal whose attainment is worth striving for. Hers is a day of small things. The child does not see the end from the beginning, but the teacher must, and the constant recognition of the desired object must influence her simplest lesson._

_These pages are written in the hope of helping 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._

_SARAH LOUISE ARNOLD._

_Boston, Mass., July, 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 PREPARATION FOR READING LESSONS 105

VI. EXPRESSION IN READING 117

VII. LESSONS TO SUGGEST PLANS OF WORK 139

VIII. LESSONS TO SUGGEST PLANS OF WORK—CONTINUED 157

IX. THE STUDY OF PICTURES 185

X. HINTS FOR READING LESSONS 199

XI. 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 civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in
best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men
themselves were hidden and inaccessible, 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 action. Thus, I think, we often owe to them the
perception of immortality. They impart sympathetic 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
address the imagination: only poetry inspires poetry. They
become the organic culture of the time. College education is
the reading of certain books which the common sense of all
scholars agrees will represent the science already accumulated.
In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest
delight._

_RALPH WALDO EMERSON._

READING: HOW TO TEACH IT.