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1. To give broader interests and better knowledge of environment.

2. To increase the pupil's powers of observation, organization, and expression.

3. To further develop the sentence sense.

4. To enlarge the vocabulary.

5. To teach the conventional form of the business letter and of the social letter.

6. To eliminate errors in the spelling of common words.

7. To give a knowledge of certain elementary principles of grammar. B. Material:

1. Oral and written themes on topics, such as:

(a) Stories of vacations, recreations, and outings. In these, set before the pupils the aim to interest their classmates. When the themes are read aloud, ask if any uninteresting and unnecessary details are included. This will curb the common practice of beginning with: "Got up and ate my breakfast," etc.

(b) Descriptions of scenes or objects. The best subject is one that is

familiar to the writer, but not to the rest of the class; the test of success, has he given the class a clear picture or impression. (c) Description of things that the pupil has made, or directions for doing things, e. g., "How to mend a bicycle tire," "How to make fudge." The test questions are: Is it clear? Is any essential point omitted?

(d) Details of work done in other departments of the school, or of work outside of school hours, or in vacations. Such subjects as "How I earned my first money" are suggestive.

(e) Frequent practice in letter writing. The form of the business letter should be taught. In teaching the social letter it has been found an incentive to have the pupils correspond with those of a similar grade in another city. The first letter is planned as a class exercise, the form, the stationery, the superscription all being carefully considered. Later letters may be written with little supervision. The desire of the pupil to do well will be an incentive for careful work, and the practice in composition may be quite as valuable as if done under the teacher's eye. Pupils receiving particularly good letters may give them to the teacher to read to the class, and report the teacher's comment to the writer.

(f) Reports, chiefly oral, upon books read outside of class, the aim of the one giving the report being to interest other pupils in the book. For this purpose, it is best not to allow the whole story to be told.

(g) The continuation orally of a narrative half read or told by the teacher, the pupil being left to invent the rest of the story. (h) Themes on topics suggested by incidents or situations in the books studied. These should not be mere reproductions. 2. The subject of grammar, while distinctly less important than composition, should not be neglected. The topics outlined below may be taught either with or without a textbook. If without, notebooks should be required. As fast as learned, the principles should be ap

plied in the correction of written work, and pupils held strictly responsible for observing them. It is assumed that some knowledge of simple-sentence structure has been given in the sixth grade. The following should be taught in the seventh grade:

(a) The sentence as made up of subject and predicate with or without modifiers-connectives, direct object, predicate noun or predicate adjective.

(b) The sentence as declarative, interrogative, or imperative.

(c) The subject as a word, a phrase, or a clause (the phrase being a group element not containing a subject and a predicate, the clause containing both).

(d) The subject as simple or modified; single or compound.

(c) The predicate verb as one word or more than one; modified or unmodified: complete or incomplete; single or compound.

(f) The parts of speech recognized by chief function of each; nouns as common and proper; inflection of nouns and personal pronouns;

the idea of tense.

NOTE.-Verbs are not to be classified or conjugated. Verbals are to be considered nouns or adjective or adverbs, as the case may be; adjectives and adverbs are not to be classified or compared. In correcting errors in grammar in written work insist upon the application of such principles as are known; otherwise merely supply the correct form.

3. Spelling of words used.

4. Necessary punctuation.

C. Method.

Certain details of method have been explained in connection with the projects listed under B. To these may be added the following:

1. The general principle to be kept in mind is that of unity of aim and variety in exercises tending to accomplish this aim. The objects of the course as stated under A should be kept constantly in mind.

2. Motives for composition work should be sought in the life of the school and of the community. A letter written to a pupil who is kept at home by sickness, and who wants to know what is going on at school; an address in favor of a candidate for a school office; a debate on a question of local interest which is being discussed in the newspapersuch topics help to vitalize the work. (See the English Journal, Sept., 1914, "Social Motives in Composition," by E. H. K. McComb.)

3. Oral discussion and the framing of a brief outline should usually precede the writing of themes. Criticism should be constructive and should point out merits as well as faults. In pupil criticism it is particularly necessary to require this.

4. Composition work should be socialized. The pupil should write with a definite audience in mind, and as far as possible, his work should be presented to the class. Class criticism should in a large measure take the place of teacher criticism. If the purpose in writing is made clear in the assignment, and if the general aims are kept before the members of the class, they can criticize a theme very successfully, and the reaction upon the writer is more marked than when the criticism comes from the teacher.

5. Blackboard work should be a prominent feature. These exercises should be brief enough to allow many to be written and criticized within the recitation period. The use of colored chalk to indicate mistakes is effective.

6. In oral and written work keep before the pupils the conception of the sentence as a unit. Combat the common practice of making an oral composition a series of statements linked with "ands."

7. So long as bad spelling is considered a mark of illiteracy, it is the duty of the school to make a determined effort to overcome it. The study of a spelling book is open to many objections. To send a pupil to the dictionary when he makes a mistake merely shows him how the word is spelled; it does not teach him to spell it. His mistakes are due to the fact that he has a blurred or a wrong mental image of the word. To correct this it is necessary to make the right image familiar. When a pupil misspells a word, he shoud be required to pronounce it and to write it slowly and carefully. Further, the word should be copied into a note book, which the teacher should inspect from time to time, testing the pupil upon his list.

8. As an aid to increasing the vocabulary, the dictionary should be frequently used. This may be supplemented by the study of word lists selected by the teacher from the books studied.

9. Short prose selections should be read and reread aloud until they are practically memorized. Skill in expression and facility in the use of words may thus be cultivated effectively.

A. Aims:

GRADE VIII.

In general the same as before. Try also

1. To secure greater flexibility and variety of sentence structure.

2. To teach the general principles of paragraphing.

B. Material.

1. Themes, based largely upon personal experience and observation. See topics under Grade VII B, to which may be added:

(a) Simple work in explanation of local and civic matters. This may take the form of written answers to questions such as, How are our streets repaired? Who fixes our tax rate, and for what are the proceeds spent? Of what use are our parks, and who has charge of them? How are policemen selected and appointed?

(b) Descriptive themes dealing with imaginary journeys. Each pupil plans a trip to a foreign country. With an atlas he makes out his itinerary. In books of travel or such volumes as the Stoddard Lectures he reads of the principal cities and what is to be seen, and week by week writes successive chapters of his journey, illustrating his work with pictures clipped from railway and steamship folders or old magazines. (c) Themes on characters, in life or in books, whom the pupil admires. This leads naturally to themes on what pupils would like to do or to be; or this may be brought in as the concluding paragraph of an autobiography.

(d) Descriptions of interesting work in other classes, especially in the departments of manual training, household arts, and science.

(e) Imaginary conversation between characters in books. This may lead to dramatizing scenes or chapters, and to acting them before the class or school.

(f) Simple exercises in argument, the topics usually growing out
of school life, the aim being to teach the pupils to keep to the
question, and to treat their opponents courteously.

(g) Much drill in practical exposition, pupils telling how to do
things, how to find things, how to go to various places, how
various contrivances work. Much of this should be oral, or
at least read before the class, and tested by the question,
Has the writer made it clear to one who did not know?
(h) Accounts of visits to points of interest, trips through a factory,
visits to museums, etc. If this is a class exercise it should
be preceded by a talk telling the pupils what they are to
observe particularly. Sometimes the teacher may announce
that the best composition on this topic will be published in
the school paper.

2. The following topics in grammar should be taught:

(a) The sentence as simple, complex, or compound; principal and subordinate clauses; connectives of subordinate clauses; types of conjunctions connecting independent clauses in compound sentences; elliptical sentences.

(b) The parts of speech; classes, forms, and uses of pronouns; the idea of person, number, and voice of verbs developed (paradigms of indicative mood built up by way of illustration); subordinating and coordinating conjunctions; interjections.

C. Method.

The principles laid down under Grade VII, C., especially numbers 1 to 5, apply equally to this grade. To these may be added:

1. To secure variety and flexibility in sentence structure there should be abundant drill in sentence manipulation. This, as experience shows, is not only effective but interesting, since it introduces an element of challenge or contest. This exercise may have various forms, such as: (a) Combining a number of brief statements into a single sentence. (b) Changing compound sentences into simple or complex ones. (c) Reshaping awkward sentences, especially such as contain unnecessary repetitions.

(d) Punctuating many sentences, or repunctuating faulty sentences. This is effective in showing the relationship of part to part and supplements the grammar study, giving it practical application.

2. As the pupil is now beginning to write longer themes, it becomes important to emphasize somewhat the paragraph as a unit of discourse. This may be done in various ways, as:

(a) Analyzing parts of the books and magazines read, to show that good writers observe the principle of paragraph unity. (b) Planning themes in class and requiring that each main topic be developed as a paragraph.

(c) Requiring pupils occasionally to exchange themes and test paragraph unity by trying to write the topic of each paragraph in the other's theme.

(d) Assigning topic sentences and requiring pupils to develop them into paragraphs.

3. The study of spelling should be continued as outlined in Grade VII. 4. Necessary punctuation should be taught.

5. In the study of grammar it will facilitate the pupil's work in taking up a foreign language to emphasize nomenclature common to English and the language studied.1

GRADE IX.

A. Aims:

1. To arouse an intelligent interest in the structure of the whole composition and the coherence of its parts.

2. To broaden the pupil's knowledge of grammar, with emphasis upon the forms of the verb.

3. To make the misspelling of common words an uncommon occurrence. B Material:

1. Themes of various types, some of them continuing the work explained in Grade VIII. Other projects are:

(a) Themes dealing with various occupations. Each pupil chooses a calling about which he can obtain first-hand information. In class a general outline is made, covering such points as: How to enter this occupation; the work done by those engaged in it; what qualities are necessary for success; advantages and disadvantages of this calling. If a number of these themes are read before the class it will start the pupils to thinking vocationally.2

(b) In descriptive writing occasionally select subjects that allow of appeal to several senses, and then judge the themes by the fullness of the sense appeal. For example, the contents of a lunch basket may be described in such a way as to make the reader see, feel, and perhaps smell each article, until he fairly grows hungry.

(c) An incident in a book may be rewritten as if it were an actual occurrence which the pupil is to report for a newspaper, giving the article suitable headlines.

(d) Letters may be supposed to pass between characters in books. For this it is best to select books with which the class is familiar so that the pupils can judge how well the writer has caught the spirit of the character.

(e) Reports, chiefly oral, on current events, based upon newspaper reading. This affords an opportunity of teaching pupils to discriminate between important and unimportant news. Good cartoons may also be brought into class and made the subject of discussion.

2. The grammar work for this grade is as follows:

(a) The sentence: Word order; agreement; variations by condensation of clauses or expansion of verbals and of phrases; essential and nonessential clauses.

(b) The parts of speech: Various uses of nouns; substitutes for nouns; modes of the verb (indicative, imperative, and subjunetive); verb phrases; parts of troublesome verbs; building paradigms; uses of infinitives and participles; words used now as one part of speech, now as another; expletives.

1 See the report of the National Joint Committee on Uniform Grammatical Nomeaclature, published by the N. E. A., Ann Arbor, Mich.

* See " Vocational and Moral Guidance" by Jesse B. Davis.

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