time, yet I am sensible that it would be useless to attempt to change all this at once. Recognizing the futility of such an effort, I advise the teacher to conform to this arbitrary and unscientific method until the community is educated to the newer method. The best results may be obtained, under the circumstances, by following some such plan as this: Begin with the first special lesson as soon as possible. Then, having dwelt on that as long as necessary, pass to the regular reading lessons, bearing in mind that until the second special lesson, the principle of the first should be constantly reiterated. For the entire time (say a month) between the first and second special lessons let the teacher revert to the former again and again. Let the corrections be made over and over by asking such questions as, "Is that the way you would say it if you were talking?" or, "You are not trying to make us see the picture," and so on. After the second special lesson has been taken up in class, and before the third, the endeavor of a teacher should be to enforce the principles of the first two lessons. This pian should be kept up until the last lesson has been taught.

CHAPTER VI

GROUPING

As

If the work of the first step has been carefully done, the transition to the second step will present few difficulties. a matter of fact, the pupil has been grouping unconsciously, but in a way more or less uncertain. The purpose of the next step is to fix firmly the habit of grouping. As a general rule, the pupil pronounces as many words in one group as his eye can take in and his voice utter; consequently, his reading is choppy and often meaningless.

At the outset care should be exercised in the choice of extracts. Any extract will not do. Simple passages, with simple ideas, are needed. Avoid complex, involved, inverted rhetoric. Later on, when proper habits have been formed, the difficulties may be increased; but we shall meet only with discouragement if we introduce them too soon. The following is just difficult enough to bring out the efforts of an ordinary child of ten or eleven:

Once upon a time there lived a very rich man, and a king besides, whose name was Midas; and he had a little daughter, whom nobody but myself ever heard of, and whose name I either never knew, or have entirely forgotten. So, because I love odd names for little girls, I choose to call her Marygold.--The Golden Touch.

THORNE.

HAW

The teacher should use a great many isolated extracts. These may not be so interesting as entire selections, but if chosen carefully and read with a definite object, it is surprising how they hold the attention of the class. It may also be pos

sible to find short stories to supplement the extracts. Many good extracts may be found in the reader or even in some of the other books the children are using.

The reason for urging this plan is that few reading books present the difficulties of reading, in a rational, graded manner. Any selection may contain the simplest problem and the most difficult in one paragraph. The pupil must be trained. to get his ideas from the printed page in groups, and such training can surely be gained better by using carefully selected passages than by the present aimless wandering among a labyrinth of words. It is admitted that a good teacher of reading may be able to get along without calling the attention of the class to grouping as a definite step; but he must certainly have that step in mind as part of the development of a reader.

In this lesson we begin exercises in what might be called "mental technique." It must be borne in mind that these lessons are planned with the object of presenting one element at a time, and the pupil must not be expected to read well where he has had no previous drill. In this lesson, therefore, the pupil should be held responsible for what he has learned in the first and second lessons only. It must further be remembered that all corrections should be made by putting such questions as, "Is that the whole picture?" or, "Have you not given us more than one picture?" Never tell a pupil to make a pause here or a pause there, or to read faster or more slowly. Such corrections are useless. We must learn to rely upon the thinking to govern the rate of speed, or the length and frequency of the pauses.

It might be well to bear in mind that in colloquial speech pauses are less frequent. In other words, the groups are longer.

As a result of such training as the pupil gets in this lesson

we shall note that he will learn to look ahead, and so rid himself of the too general tendency to utter words as soon as he sees them, regardless of the sense. The process of recognizing words and pronouncing them simultaneously is attended with no small amount of danger. It begets a fatal facility in reading that is a positive detriment to the pupil. There are thousands who read glibly and yet are utterly ignorant of the meaning of what they read. To prevent the formation of such a habit or to break it up where it already exists, there is no better plan than that herein advocated for the study of grouping. It need hardly be said that the method of telling a pupil "to pause before a relative pronoun, inverted adjec tives, prepositional phrases," and the like, is virtually useless. The thought, and not the grammatical construction, determines the pause.

Another suggestive lesson for the teaching of grouping is offered:

You remember that in our last lesson we learned that we must first get the thought before we could read. Now we are to study how to get the thought.

Did you ever notice how you think? If you hear the word "Car," what do you think of? Some, of a horse car, some, of an electric car, and some, of a steam car. So you see the word "Car" by itself does not give us a very clear picture. The words, "I saw," do not mean very much either. For unless we know what you saw we get nothing to think about. The two words "in a" do not mean much, and by this time you know why.

Let us put all these words together and add a word or two: “I saw a man in a steam car." Now we have a clear picture. What do we learn from this? We learn that a single word does not give us a clear picture, and that it takes three, and four, and sometimes many words, to give us a picture. We can think "I saw a man" or "in a steam car," but we get a complete thought only when we put these two groups of words together. We notice also that while it takes just a moment to see a picture, it often takes many words to describe it.

What we have done is called grouping; that is, reading several words together just as we read the syllables of a word. Let us try some examples. "Charles gave a sled to his brother." Here there are two groups: One ending at "sled," the other, at "brother." "I went to King Street with my sister to buy a new hat." Here we have three groups. Can you pick them out?

The last thing we are to learn in this lesson is that every group of words has a picture in it, and that we must not read aloud any word until we have got the thought or the picture in the group.

Pick out the groups in the following sentence, and then read aloud, but be sure you pay attention to the picture in each group: "When-our-school-closes for-the-summer-vacation, some-of-us-go-to

the-country, others-go-to-the-lakes, some-go-to-the-mountains, andmany stay-in-the-city."

For to-morrow's lesson* I want you to bring in the groups in the following examples, putting hyphens between the words of each group, just as we did in the sentence about the summer vacation.

*The teacher should select the examples, not too many, and write them on the board; or they may be selected from the reader. Drills of this kind should be continued until correct habits are formed, but should cease before the pupils become tired of them.