290 METHODS IN TEACHING 



ened and brightened by contact with invigorating mental 

 food. What difference does it make if there are in a book 

 many words that a child has never seen before ? How is he 

 to learn new words? To give a child interesting reading 

 containing many words whose meaning he does not know is 

 like giving a squirrel nuts to crack. If the story is alluring, 

 the meaning of the new words will be found out by some 

 means. 



The outline, used tentatively in the third and fourth 

 grades, becomes a recognized tool during this year. The 



teacher's outline may sometimes be used as 

 Outlines 



a model and an incentive to progress, and 



the teacher should often work over with the pupils their 

 outlines. As such a lesson is very instructive for all the 

 class, board work is better than individual criticisms. The 

 teacher must not be too ambitious for her pupils in this 

 acquirement. It must be remembered that outlines are 

 largely a matter of judgment, a faculty slightly developed 

 with fifth grade pupils. The training to be derived from 

 outlines in this grade is the help they afford in the develop- 

 ment of the judgment, of the power of analysis, and of the 

 ability to put together in a continuous, systematic form the 

 thoughts of any whole. These three processes, at least, are 

 involved. A story is before a child as a whole, as the 

 teacher has told it, or as he has read it for himself. He is 

 to mention the various important thoughts in that story; 

 that is, he is to analyze it, selecting certain thoughts and re- 

 jecting others. Then he is to arrange those thoughts ac- 

 cording to their proper relation to one another; that is, he is 

 to exercise continuity of thought. When we think how 

 many mature people are lacking in judgment, analysis, or 



