POEMS FOR ADDITIONAL WORK 269 This poem may be memorized by the children, then written from memory. Tell any other stories you may know of the origin of the forget-me-not. II. Poems for Additional Work The following carefully selected list of poems furnish varied and excellent material for use on many occasions and for different purposes. It is thought best not to attempt any definite directions for the use of these poems. You, the teacher, will be the best judge of this matter. What poems do you especially like? Which ones do think your children would appreciate? Which one especially fits in with the work or the occasion? Your answer to these and similar questions will determine the use that you will make of this material. you Determining your course in this way you will probably make thorough study with the children of a considerable number of these poems; many of them the children will commit to memory. Perhaps, first and last, you will at least read all of them to your class. They contain a wealth of literary material which may enrich the thought, the imagination, the sentiments, and the choice vocabulary of pupils -or of any one-who will live with them sympathetically. The following brief and imperfect analysis and partial classification of these poems in accordance with several purposes which they may be made to serve will perhaps be of assistance. 1. Poems of information. A few of the poems may be read on appropriate occasion for the sake of the information which they contain. For examples, 12 in connection with history lessons; 15 when studying boy life among the Indians. The poetic form conveys the spirit as well as the mere fact. 2. Story-telling poems. Every one of the first fifteen poems tells a story. The children may reproduce these stories in prose, either orally or in writing. If they are to write them, they should first study the printed or written poem, that they may master the spelling and any other forms that they may need to use. Poems that cannot be put before the children in books may be written on the blackboard, or hektograph copies may be made. 3. Poems that may serve as the basis of original work, such as 1, 3, 10, 11, 17. For example, after hearing 10, pupils may tell or write stories that the ghost fairies might tell. 4. Nature poems. The poems 16-31 may be used in connection with many phases of nature study. 5. Character-building poems, or poems that teach moral lessons. There will be no lack of occasions when some one of the following poems can be used to advantage: 2, 4-9, 14, 15, 38-42. 6. Poems for dramatizing. Several of the nar POEMS FOR ADDITIONAL WORK 271 rative poems, like 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 15, furnish good material for dramatizing. Of course suitable preparation must be made by turning the story of the poem into a prose narrative, and telling it largely in the form of conversation between the several characters involved. 7. Poems for memorizing. Any of the poems are worth memorizing. Encourage Encourage children to memorize those that especially appeal to them. Have each child memorize as many as he will voluntarily. 2. How the Leaves Come Down Susan Coolidge 3. The Land of Story Books 4. The Wind and the Moon 5. The Happiest Land 6. The Pied Piper of Hamelin. 7. Lucy Gray; or, Solitude. 8. Goody Blake and Harry Gill Robert Louis Stevenson George Macdonald Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Frank Dempster Sherman The following brief list of books furnishes a fund of good literary material that children can use at once in the various exercises called for in their book, in oral and written reproductions, in drama 66 tizing, in turning conversational stories into dialogue form, in modelling original" stories after type stories, in the making of outlines, etc. These are stories that children enjoy and appreciate, and readily assimilate. They may be told or read to the children by the teacher, or children may read or tell them after preparation-in turn. This little library provides abundance of enjoyable silent reading, as individual pupils have time and inclination. |