THE ATMOSPHERE. 1 What is the atmosphere? P. 155. 2 How would it affect us to go up in the air two or three miles? 3 What is wind? 4 How fast does the air move? 5 What causes wind? 6 66 are clouds? 7 How high above the earth are they? SUGGESTIONS TO YOUNG TEACHERS. 1. "In the morning be at your school-room at least fifteen minutes before nine o'clock. 2. Have order commence the moment the bell has rung, and teach your pupils to enter and retire from the room in a quiet and orderly man ner. 3. See that the school-room is thoroughly swept at least once every day, and the furniture properly arranged. 4. Allow no chewing of gum, or eating in school-time. 5. Teachers are apt to give too long lessons; give short lessons, and require them to be thoroughly learned. 6. Have a written programme of exercises posted in the room, and follow it to the letter. 7. Have all your classes (except the advanced class) read their spelling lessons in the class before spelling; and in spelling the pupil should pronounce the word after the teacher, and each syllable should be separately pronounced, I would allow my pupils to spell but once on a word,—the first is a test of knowledge, the second a mere guess-work, and a waste of time. 8. In primary reading endeavour to have the pupil learn the words at sight, rather than by spelling them out. 9. In your other reading classes have your pupils thoroughly understand the names and uses of all punctuation marks, and always observe them in reading. 10. The common faults in reading are neglecting pauses, speaking too low, indistinct articulation, and reading too fast. To obviate this difficulty I would advise concert reading each day, of about five minutes to a class. 11. Be very particular in making your entries of attendance in the register correctly,--keep your register neat and clean, and make your entries with pen and ink; the appearance of the register is generally an index of the personal neatness of the teacher. 12. Never allow a pupil to interrupt you when engaged in hearing a class spell or recite, nor ask questions so as to be heard by the school. If a pupil desires information, let him indicate it by some sign generally understood by pupils and teacher, and the latter should promptly attend to these calls when made at the proper time." HOW TO TEACH READING. In my own experience in teaching Reading, I have found a great tendency on the part of some of my pupils to read carelessly, miscalling many of the most simple words; in pronouncing some words, they would leave out syllables; in some instances omit letters, in others add them; many of the consonants they would not sound properly, some not at all; and when they came to a hard word, guess at it, call it something and pass along. They did not like to read because they read so awkwardly, and made so little sense out of what they tried to read. Is it to be wondered at? In almost every common school we may find some such pupils. When they make a mistake the teacher merely corrects them and they pass along. They become discouraged, so does the teacher, and they almost cease to make an effort to read well; so they read just about the same way, improving very little, if any, from term to term-year in and year out. The teacher's patience has been worn out, he gives up in despair, and wonders why they do not read well; he assigns them long lessons, and has them read once or twice every day. Now it is for such that I wish to make the following suggestions. After forming a class of such pupils, make up your mind to be patient and persevering beyond measure; encourage them to believe that they may become good readers, with your help, if they will but try hard enough; put into the class as much life as possible; assign very short lessons, but a few lines to read at a time; drill them on the sounds of all the letters in the lesson, as well as the pronunciation of the words; have them learn also the definitions of the words, the names and uses of all the pauses, that they may understand what they read; then read every exercise yourself before calling upon the class to read it; have them read it separately, and in concert till they can do both well before assigning them a new lesson. I have found the following a very good method to elicit care and attention as well as thorough preparation on the lesson. Have two recitation seats, on one of which the class may be seated at the beginning of the recitation, and whenever any one in the class makes a blunder in any part of the lesson assigned, that one may take the other seat which may be designated as the "awkward squad's" seat-"blunderer's" seat-or something of the kind, and you will find in a little while that you will not get many on that seat, and your awkward, poor readers, will become good ones. At least that has been my experience. The best class I ever had, or the one that learned the most rapidly, and passed the best examination at the end of the term, was conducted in like manner. HOW TO TEACH SPELLING. Children should be taught to print with the pencil as soon as possible after they enter school, if they have not learned before; they usually love to work with slate and pencil, and every child in school should be supplied with them, to while |