RELATION TO READING AND LITERATURE. 267 



children the use and value of writing, and the fact that 

 they can help "write stories;" they give them practice 

 in expressing their ideas clearly, and can be made help- 

 ful in training the children to relate successive thoughts 

 and statements, to keep a sequence in their work. Il- 

 lustrations of such "blackboard stories" are given in 

 the work outlined for the first grade in Part II. At 

 first the pupils can merely copy what they see on the 

 blackboard. The character of the blackboard reading- 

 lessons and the method pursued in these early steps 

 in language expression have much to do with the char- 

 acter of the later expressive work of the pupils. 



Such reading-lessons must be in accord with the prin- 

 ciples laid down in Chapters VII and VIII. The matter 

 must be based on sense-perception and on appercep- 

 tion, on what the children have seen and already know, 

 and must interest the children. The lessons must call 

 into play the imagination, not be confined to mere facts 

 of sense. Each reading-lesson should have a sequence, 

 a line of thought. Each should be a unit in itself, and 

 at the same time, part of a larger unit, including a series 

 of lessons. 



What has been said in the preceding chapter about 

 language expression, and about the essentials in all ex- 

 pression, applies to the primary reading-lesson as well 

 as to the work of the individual pupils. 



A reading-lesson in the form of a story or narrative, 

 or one in which what has been studied is personified, is 

 better, in most cases, than a lesson which is purely 

 descriptive. 



