Arizona republican., 1909-12-05
TWO WORDS A DAY THEY LEARN
All Sorts of Records in Orthography
 Made By the Elementary Pupils

All Sorts of Records in orthesraphy
 Made By the Elementary Pupils l This is story of how a man from North Dakota taught the youngsters of the Cleveland. Ohio, schools how to Increase by 600 per cent in two years their ability tO spell. So much complaint was made few years ago against the schools of Cleveland that an educational commission was appointed to investigate courses of study and the inherent defects of the school system and make rec !; concentrations for improvements. | Among the members of the commits sion were President Charles F. Thwing. of Western Reserve Univer- sity and Chas. F. Howe, of the Case School of Applied Science.
 The commission worked for a year, beginning it's labors in 1905 Early in 1906 it filed it's ofrmal report with the board of education. It's several criticisms were directed toward the systems of teaching orthography. | Durings it's investigations the com l mission gave a list of fifty words in a spelling contest to the eighth | grade pupils. Each of the thousands of children averaged thirteen words out of the fifty misspelled.
 A few months ago the same list was submitted to the children of the same grade. The average number of the fifty words misspelled by each child was less than three. A reform in the methods of instruction intro T.. T r ..t-
 ant superintendent. gets credit for the improvement
 | Hicks has gone back to the funda- mentals in teaching spelling. He ties his faith to contests. These contests partake of the flavor of the old-fash- toned bee. but they differ widely in many of the essential details. Pri- marily, these contests are between all of the schools of the city of the same grade and the standing is Ob- tained through oral and written tests four times a year. The names of the schaools are conspicu~usly bull letined in the oirder in their merit | and the rivalry is keen.
 From the first Hicks insisted that the children of all grades had too much work in spelling to do it well. From the days of the log school houses spelling has been looked upon as an accomplishment that should come easily and naturally and with out much instruction. That to most people it never came was considered merely an incident. The spelling | books, since such since volumes have been. have been made up of lessons containing fifteen, twenty. thirty words. unsystematized and with no scientific grouping. Take the next lesson" the teacher said at the con- clusion of every recitation.
 \ Every day every child was expected to learn all these words and review them at haphazard or perhaps on Fri day afternoon at class spell down. ,. Hicks changed all this. His first | thought has been system, not chaos, second a method with system that would hold childs attention and make him as interested in spelling as in history or any other study. Immediately after he came to Cleve- land the new supervisor sent out word to every grade teacher in the city asking that he or she send him list of from fifteen to twenty-five words most persistently misspelled by the children. Since the elementary schools employ more than 1900 teachers, the ] combined lists made formidable col | lection: but Hicks took the reports and went through them. He classified the words missed generally in the third, fourth. fifth, sixth. seventh and eighth grades, and list of forty words for written contest and eighty words for an oral contest was pre- | pared for each grade.
 | A time was set apart the same day for these contests. Every elementary school took part. Careful account was kept of the words missed. and public ity was given through teh newspapers of the schools that had the highest percentage of words correct through | all the grades.
 That was Hicks start in making the children in the schools better spoilers, and he made it by centering the chil- dren's attention to the work. He didn't 1 tell them so much the importance of being good spoilers. but he aroused their interest by arousing their pride and commenting a rivalry that grew l to De llOt tiC nv dh cSe'NNA' | school football teams.
 Contests have been held ever since in the schools. an interschool contest being held four times year. In the 1 first contest the eighth grade of one school missed on an average each pu- piI of one and one e-half words out of the 12O words to be spelled orally and in writing. Since that time the num- Der of words given in each contest has been doubled, and in the correspond ing test in 1907, one year after the in auguration of the idea, the same grade missed each pupil less than half a word.
 Catch words." the delight of the old fashioned teacher have been elim- mated in the new system. Hicks be- lieves that the child should first be taught a vocabulary of words in or dinary use-taught first how to spell the word correctly. then taught it's ,,oapipr it's derivation. it's use in sen