SCHOOL WORK NOVEMBER 1903 THE USE OF THE DICTIONARY The Syllabus in English, of the New Course of Study, provides for the use of the dictionary in grades 6A to 8B inclusive. However, in grade 4A under the subdivision of Reading, the following appears: "The use of diacritical marks as aids in the pronunciation of difficult words and in the intelligent use of the dictionary, is recommended.” It would seem, therefore, that although actually prescribed for the first time in 6A, a partial use of the dictionary is supposed to be put into practice two years earlier. Such a recommendation I heartily endorse. The ability to refer to a dictionary or to any other publication, alphabetically arranged, is an essential in practical life as well as in the school room. The training given in the use of the dictionary will enable the child so trained, to refer to directories, telephone registers, lists of geographical names or any other alphabetical record from which information is to be received. Because such knowledge is an absolute essential, it seems that to wait until 6A to give instruction in this work, takes from that very large proportion of children who never reach the upper part of school, a valuable bit of practical training, which, with few exceptions, will be needed in any walk in life. With the implied permission which this note in 4A will seem to give to teachers and principals, I would suggest that principals arrange a graded plan for the use of the dictionary, leaving it to the judgment of the individual principal and to the conditions of special neighborhoods to decide how early the work is to be begun; but whether begun early or late, there should be system in its develop ment. I should suggest the work be planned somewhat on the lines that follow: 1. Exercises in Simply Finding Words. Even this should progress from the simplest stage to more difficult exercises. The simplest exercise might take the following form: The teacher places on the board or selects from books open before the children, some word. The children are directed to look in the dictionary until they find it. Of course, a preliminary talk as to the order of succession of letters must be given, and it is possible the children brought up entirely on the word method of reading, may have to be taught the alphabet before this can be done. The children will attack this new work in the same spirit in which they take up a game, and a few exercises of this nature will quicken mental alertness on the part of most of the children. After the class shows an ability to find a word that it sees either on the board or on the page, the next step should be to find a word spoken by the teacher without the sense of sight to aid in its recognition. The word so chosen, for a time should be absolutely without any difficulties in spelling. Merely to recognize the word and to be able to find it is what should be aimed at in this second step. After this, let the teacher try with words whose first syllable is not spelled phonetically; for instance, pheasant. The natural instinct of the child will be to look for pheasant under the letter "f." Failing to find it there, its knowledge of phonics must make it hunt under such letters as may be pronounced like "f." This will give pleasant and attractive work for many short exercises.* It is futile to attempt more until this step has been absolutely conquered. With such a foundation, the intelligent use of the list of proper names in the back of the geography, of directories, telephone registers, library catalogues, and all other alphabetical records is assured. 2. Syllabication. The use of the dictionary in showing the correct syllabication of words will be found to be a tremendous help in teaching children how to spell correctly. Exercises in the use of the dictionary for the purpose of syllabizing should also be given. (a) Dissyllables accented. on the first syllable. (b) Dissyllables accented on the second syllable. (c) Trisyllables. (d) Polysyllables. Special attention must be paid to the accented syllable. 3. Pronunciation. This work must be preceded by thorough phonic drill, by means of diacritical marks. With such a foundation this knowledge must be applied to words in the dictionary. Another preliminary of great importance is a close study of the key at the bottom of the dictionary page. Exercises in pronunciation should begin simply and progress in difficulty, beginning of course, with dissyllables and gradually progressing to polysyllables. 4. Meaning. To get the correct meaning of a new word from a small dictionary is almost impossible to one who has no idea of the value or use of the word. Since economy compels the use of the small dictionary, the child must be carefully taught to reject the meaning found unless such meaning "makes sense" and seems to remove the child's ignorance. Careful attention to this step would insure not only progress in acquiring the meaning of new words, but as a far greater value, it would train the judgment. Every teacher should encourage the children to go to the larger dictionaries for aid when the small dictionary has failed to make matters clear. The last step, which should be limited to the grades from 7A to 8B included, would be to learn to distinguish the use of synonyms. For this purpose the small dictionary is almost valueless, as its abridged explanations are apt to be misleading. In all of these grades the larger dictionaries should be in constant use. NOTE. A splendid opportunity to train the children's judgment and the application of their knowledge of phonics is here presented. A child may be pardoned for looking for the word pur. pose under per, or pir, or even pyr, because all ( combinations could be pronounced very much like pur; but it seems to me as though something were sadly lacking in the child's comprehension and the teacher's manner of training. if a child should attempt to look for the word purpose under por or par, or any other combination that phonetically refused to produce pur. METHODS IN COMPOSITION OLIVE M. JONES, Instructor, P. S. 77, Manhattan In this article the writer has attempted to do no more than suggest some methods and devices, gathered together from many sources, and shown, by her own experience, to be both practical and practicable. It was at first her intention to elaborate some of them into detailed lessons, but the pressure of other work has made that impossible. An analysis of the course in composition will disclose that the work consists of oral reports, letter-writing, composition-writing, and lessons in construction. The oral reports should be based upon home reading of current events and occasionally of other reading matter, such as library books. The construction lessons should give the children the principles of sentence structure and of paragraphing, and should include instruction concerning certain specified mistakes found in the children's own writings. These construction lessons form a particularly valuable part of the work, and if systematically planned and faithfully carried out will yield the most prisingly satisfactory results. To achieve such results, the teacher must force herself despite many temptations, to observe certain limits; in the first place she must have in mind one definite point or principle. of sentence structure, or paragraphing, as the case may be; second, the point or principle should be taught from models and by reference to errors in pupils' previous work; third, and most important of all, in the correction of the text composition or letter written sur by the class, the teacher should dwell only on the point just taught in the construction lessons. She should let all other mistakes go unnoticed or else correct them without remark. Possibly it would be wise to pause. right here to speak of the correction of composition. It will always be difficult, but there is no reason why it should be the bugbear of a teacher's life. So that it may not be such an obnoxious burden, let us learn, first of all, what not to do-and that will include very nearly all that we were once bound to do both by habit and requirement. First, the teacher should not correct the compositions herself; the work must be done in class by the pupils themselves. Second, not more than one (or at most, two) kinds of errors should receive attention in one lesson; to attempt to correct, or even indicate, every mistake means distraction of mind and irritation of nerves and temper for both pupils and teacher. Third, the composition should seldom, if ever, be rewritten in its entirety; paragraphs and sentences, containing errors discussed during the lesson, should be reconstructed, on the same paper, if possible. Of course, the papers will not be "show" products, in appearance at least; but the pupils will be gaining in the very valuable power of revision. If it be absolutely necessary to have such "show" papers, let an occasional composition go uncorrected. Fourth, not the first and only, as it frequently used to be, but the last item for attention should be punctuation and capitalization. After a certain principle of |