LEARNING TO DESCRIBE 31 Do not mind that the results are crude, so long as the children are thinking. The main purpose of these exercises is to stimulate the pupils' imagination and to give them practice in expressing the results of their imagining in orderly, connected, pointed language. Stories in good form and full of originality will come in due time. XI (18). Learning to Describe Read with the children The Blind Men and the Elephant. Let them answer the questions following. Then help them as little as will suffice — to read understandingly and to carry out the directions under Something to Do. Be ready to provide, if necessary, one or more pictures of an elephant. Then call for several descriptions. Give the children opportunity and insist that they judge and comment on the descriptions, as suggested in their book. This is just as important as the descriptions themselves. XII (21). Games of Description The following "games of description" should involve careful, discriminating observations, the accurate oral use of language, and the interpretation of this language in appropriate mental pictures and ideas. See that the children, in their descriptions and in their criticisms, follow the directions given and practiced in the last lesson. Game 1. The Four Blind Men. The teacher blindfolds four children. Each in turn stands before the class and describes, from touch, an object which the teacher places in his hands. The object should not be too familiar a piece of wood, a stone, a leaf, a feather, a nail, will and the pupil describing it must not name it. The pupils at their seats criticize the descriptions and decide which is best. serve Game 2. What Is It? One child leaves the room. The teacher points out to the other children some familiar, rather easily described object, as a book, a pointer. a window. The child returns to the room, and several children in turn describe the object that was designated by the teacher. Of course they must not name it; nor should they, at first, give any peculiarity about it, such as its use, which would make its recognition certain without real description. In this game, the children are not blind men; they can see before them the object that they are describing. After a few descriptions, the child is asked to guess the object. If he does so, he should tell whose description first enabled him to guess it. The other children should pass judgment on the several descriptions, as directed in the last lesson. The one that gave the best description may be the next one to leave the room. Game 3. Who Is It? room. One child describes as clearly as possible another child in the The pupil who first guesses which child is being described may describe another. And so the game may proceed. XIII (21). Getting the Story from a Poem Read The Mountain and the Squirrel to the children, trying to express its meaning as clearly as pos GETTING THE STORY FROM A POEM 33 sible. Study it carefully and in detail with the children, as suggested in their book. The recall and comparison of the story of Grand Tusk and Nimble will help much. The essentials, including the final moral, are the same in both stories. A further aid to the complete appreciation of the poem will be a dramatization of it. Following the suggestions for dramatizing Grand Tusk and Nimble (p. 14), help the children to turn the poem into dramatic form. Encourage free use of their imagination in the form of expression, but hold them to the facts and meaning of the poem. Perhaps it will work out something like this: Mountain Behold me! See how big I am! M. It is better to be big than to be little. S. No, it is just as well to be little. I am as good as you. (Doubtless it was some such pert reply of the squirrel, making himself equal to the great mountain, that brought forth the next words of the mountain.) M.: Little prig! S.: I know you are very big. But every one can't be as big as you are. I am not ashamed to be my own little self. If I am not so big as you, you are not so small as I, and you can't run around and climb trees as I can. M.: Run around! Climb trees! that! S.: Yes, you are good to run over. tracks. I am of more use than You are covered with my M.: I am covered with more than squirrel tracks. Just see the great forests I carry on my back! You cannot carry a single tree ! S.: We were not all meant to do the same kind of work. It is true I cannot carry forests on my back as you do, but can you crack a nut. neither After the poem has been worked out in dramatic form, let two children, adapted to the two parts, act it. Encourage the use of their own language. XIV (24). Telling the Story of the Poem, “The Mountain and the Squirrel" 1. Read the poem to the children. 2. Have one or two children read it. 3. Have it dramatized — by children other than those who took part at the last exercise. 4. In preparation for telling the story, question the children somewhat as follows, requiring them to answer with complete statements. One day who had a quarrel? Who began it? What did the mountain say? Let several children tell the story, each one in his own way. If one uses the words and expressions of the poem, well and good. If another follows rather the dramatized form, accept that. If still another uses original words or expressions, commend him, so long as his story is true to the essentials. The purpose is to get each child to enter fully into the meaning and spirit of the story, and to tell it freely, without self-consciousness, as an interesting incident. CHAPTER TWO If the spirit and purpose of the varied exercises of Chapter One have been realized, you are now on intimate terms with your class as a whole; more than this, you are at least beginning to understand sympathetically the interests, capacities, temperament, the possibilities of each child. Before taking up the work of this chapter with the children, read again the opening paragraphs of Chapter One (pp. 7-8) in which the content, the character, and the purpose of that chapter are summarized and explained; review carefully in your mind the way the exercises of that chapter were carried out, and try to determine to what extent the purposes of the chapter have been realized. Then study this chapter thoroughly, both in this Manual and in the pupils' book, always using the two together, in order that you may understand how this chapter continues the exercises and aims of Chapter One, what advance. ment is made, and especially the intimate, interdependent relations of the various exercises. You will find in all the wide variety of exercises offered which insures the constant, undulled interest of the children—that not only has each exercise a definite purpose, but that every purpose accomplished con |