64 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



help powerfully in securing that equipment of knowledge for 

 which schools are established. The reading lesson I have re- 

 ferred to was given to the lowest class, with one little boy in it 

 not yet five, which the master had allowed to enter. 



The reader will assent, I have no doubt, when I say that learn- 

 ing to read makes a severe demand upon the attention, and there 

 is perhaps no other subject, when we consider the way it is usu- 

 ally taught, that tires the pupil so quickly, simply because we do 

 not provide for the employment of the energy that must be dis- 

 charged into other channels. The act of recognizing and learn- 

 ing new words uses only a small part of the energy which the 

 various groups of nerve cells are constantly accumulating in tha 

 healthy and growing child. Now this gentle, sunny German 

 schoolmaster, who was every whit a man, focused the attention of 

 his little class upon the words he wished that day to teach them, 

 and added interest and delight to the exercise because he made 

 other demands than those upon the eye and the voice and the ear. 

 There were five words in the lesson, and the lesson lasted just five 

 minutes, after which the little class went to a table in another 

 part of the room and took up number work. The words of the 

 reading lesson were Hut, Rad, Fisch, Topf, Sichel. The letters 

 were printed on pieces of cardboard about two inches and a half 

 square, and these were placed in the shallow trough of the black- 

 board in the order demanded by the words. Each pupil when 

 called upon made a vigorous striking gesture as he pointed to 

 each letter, giving at the same time the sound of the letter. 

 When he had sounded each letter of the word in this manner he 

 made another gesture, this time from left to right as if to blend 

 all the sounds, pronouncing the word as he made the gesture. 

 Then the little group in concert spelled and pronounced the word 

 in the same fashion. The next pupil went through the same ex- 

 ercise with the second word, and so on for each pupil. Sometimes 

 the master would tip the letters of a word over on to the floor and 

 direct one of the pupils to pick them up and put them back in 

 proper order; or he would take the letter cards, mix them up, 

 and direct a pupil to put them back in the trough in their proper 

 order. 



In the Heusinger School, lately organized to give application 

 to these principles, this plan of letting children point singly and 

 then together to the letters of words written on the board has 

 been used as one way of providing motor activity while teaching 

 beginners to read. But variety is necessary, and as another way 

 of securing this the pupil, when he has read his sentence, goes to 

 the blackboard and writes it, then to the table, picks out the 

 printed or script letters according as he has been directed, and 

 forms on a tablet these letters into the sentence, and then takes 



