The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-10-18
TEACHING THE CHILDREN
 BY STORY TELLING Practical Experience of the : Method With Children
 at the Seaside. TESTING; EXPRESSION No Great Interest in the Bare Facts of Verbs
 and Nouns.
TESTING; EXPRESSION

Once upon time the writer under took to teach little school in far off sea coast town. The little village was on sandy bluff overlooking the sound and the sea. Cut off, from the main land by an impossible swamp in the rear, yet shut out from the great Atlantic by an ever-shifting sandbar that lay for leagues along the sea- coast, it gave the little town an ideal harbor of shallow water, the home of fishermen and oystermen, whose Scot- tages were scattered for two miles along the seacoast. Being isolated they were compelled to rely upon themselves, and in doing this had de- veloped a solidarity of community life and manhood and Womanhood of purity and simplicity that was as re- freshing as the breezes that ever swept their shores
 Amid such surroundings had my first experience as a teacher Not having libraries or lectures to help me. I too must depend upon self. l had never studied pedagogy and knew nothing of teaching except that which I had seen in the university lecture rooms. The teacher who pre- ceded me 'gheard" lessons and the children said" lessons. That seem ed an easy proposition, for the ques- tions were in the book and the chill dren could memorize and say the an swers.
 But I soon discovered that the chill dren found no interest in the fact that one word was verb and another a noun. They memorized the rules and repeated the lessons, but they were not at all interested In the sub ject They were bored by this me chanical process, and so was the teacher Something must be done. One day I told the class the story of 'Hiawatha's Fishing" Every child listened with rapt attention, had found something that they were in terested in. requested the children to write the story out for their lessons the next day The majority of them did so, and read the story as they had understood and written it down. One little fellow said, T ain't got no pen cil," which meant that he didn't write it. Tell it, then" said. He told it in such racy and realistic way that the class applauded. I had found something that rne child liked The second day told the story o1 "Hiawatha's Festing" then "Hiawa. thas Friends" and so on, two stories a week until we had told the whole story of Hiawatha.
 But you ask, What did that have to do with grammar" From tht story we got the nouns and verbs wt studied and the sentences that tht advanced classes analysed and stu died. (The whole school heard tn, story, 1t being an ungraded school with classes ranging from primary t high school)
 What else did we do with the story Let us see. When the children told tn story orally or on paper it was creativ work, and better for expression thai memorizing. Mary had a Title lamb, the child received a mental picture He heard the story, and re-telling i in his own words he created afresl the picture, thereby becoming a creat or and an artist himself In recitins Mary had 8 little lamb" he was deal ing with words only In telling tht story he was dealing with a n1enta picture
 One day I saw the children playins out on the lawn, and on making in. quiries they said, we are playing Hiawatha and Old Nokomis." They were dramatizing the story It was taking effect Had I been a trained teacher I would have let them do it ir class as a part of their work. Twice a week we got the words for oul spelling lesson from the story. Tn,