16. Rules for Capitals.

in the first year, viz.:

Constantly review the rules given All sentences and names of people and places begin with capitals. Add to these the rules: Each line of poetry, the names of the days of the week and the names of the months begin with capitals; but the names of the seasons do not. Teach each item thoroughly.

Teach the above rules, informally, in connection with the reading drills, using a plan similar to that suggested for the first year. Introduce but one difficulty at a time. Call attention to the capitals when writing sentences, also when the class use their books. Any second-year class can accomplish with ease all the work indicated, if the teacher helps a little daily. Many classes are able to do much more. Better teach thoroughly the most important rules than to attempt the more intricate.

17. Poetry. In the second year, the children should have poems as a third part of their reading. Owing to the greater vocabulary, they will now be able to read something much better than Mother Goose jingles and rhymes. If their readers do not supply enough selections, the teacher should copy desirable poems and let the class read from the blackboard or leaflets. The craving for rhythm is so strong in a child that to withhold good poetry from the primary grades is a serious thing. In addition to the rhythm, the child gains from poetry a large and valuable addition to his vocabulary and many helpful lessons in conduct, besides. The best poems should be memorized and occasionally recited by the pupils.

18. Poems Suitable for Second Year. Poems suitable for the second grade are so numerous that we can scarcely begin to name them. We have given a few, and suggest the following to those who wish to extend the list. Tennyson's Cradle Song; Celia Thaxter's Spring; Mrs. Coonley-Ward's Christmas Bells; Elizabeth Prentiss's Little Kitty; Sleep, Baby, Sleep (from the German); Edith M. Thomas's Talking in Their Sleep; Mrs. Miller's Hang Up the Baby's Stocking; Maud Wyman's If I Knew; Eugene Field's Little Boy Blue; Lucy Larcom's Little Brown

Thrush; Lucy Wheelock's Song of the Lilies; Frank Dempster Sherman's Daisies; Helena Jelliffe's Clovers; George Cooper's Frogs at School; George Macdonald's The Baby; Stevenson's The Swing, and Phoebe Cary's Suppose, My Little Lady.

Some of the above are more simple than others and such should be used in the early part of the year. However, all in this list, and many other beautiful and appropriate poems, may easily be read from the blackboard or hektograph leaves before the class begins the third reader.

19. Sources from Which to Draw. Among the best graded collections of timely poems for children are Songs of the Treetop and Meadow, Public School Publishing Company, Bloomington, Ill.; Graded Memory Selections, Educational Publishing Company; and Nature in Verse, Silver Burdett & Co.

In addition to the above collections, teachers will find published in our leading educational papers a great many beautiful poems adapted to the primary grades. Then, too, many valuable gems of verse are published in the best family papers and in children's magazines.

of these to supply the class, then the teacher should, by aid of the hektograph, prepare enough leaflets to supply each

member of the class with one. She may also copy stories from children's magazines in the same way. Excellent selections are often to be found in publications of the Audubon Society, and even at times in the family newspaper.

Supplementary reading, such as The Lion and the Mouse, composed and illustrated by a third grade class for a second grade class, is a great aid in introducing matters considered important by the teacher, but not contained in the regular reading lesson-as opportunities for dramatization, for nature study, or for celebration of the holidays.

Scene II

Scene.

In the woods.

The lion caught in a net.

Action. He roars! He tries to tear the net.

Mouse.

The mouse hears him.

Kind lion, you helped me once.

you now.

I will gnaw your net.

He cannot.

I will help

Action.

Lion.

The mouse gnaws and gnaws and gnaws.
The lion's net drops.

He bounds away.

You have helped me, little friend. I thank you.

21. Myths, Fables and Legends. Should it happen that the second readers used by the school are deficient in the permanent literature found in the forms of fable and myth, then selections may be presented in the same way as poems.

Among the fables and myths suitable for this grade are The Tortoise and the Hare, The Wind and the Sun, The Crow and the Pitcher, Belling the Cat, The Kid and the Wolf, The Sunflower Myth (Clytie), Legend of the Bluebird, Legend of the Aster.

Good collections of fables, myths, legends and standard fairy tales are published by D. C. Heath & Co., Educational Publishing Company, A. Flanagan Company, The Orville Brewer Publishing Company (all of Chicago), and others. Most of these collections are inexpensive.

22. Amount of Reading Required. The general rule is to have second year pupils review the latter part of several good first readers and complete the reading of at least three good second readers or their equivalents. The safe rule upon which to base promotions is to be sure that the pupils are able to read easily, intelligently and fluently all the stories and poems found in their second readers, and also corresponding material drawn from other sources and presented on the blackboard or as hektograph leaflets. Then they may pass easily to the third reader.

23. How to Use the Readers. They who make a series of school readers take incredible pains to grade the vocabulary as carefully as may be, in order that the pupil may find it an easy and happy experience to read the series from the beginning to the end. Some authors succeed remarkably well in this grading, others but indifferently. Authors offer also a brief, concisely written preface to help teachers use their books with success for themselves and their pupils. And to what end? As a matter of fact, many teachers never read the prefaces, and ignore all the authors' attempts to ease the burden of the class through careful grading. Instead, lessons are selected "to suit the season," "to please the children," "to help the nature study lessons," and for many other purposes. Being read out of the expected order, the chain of preparation is broken and the class is beset by a hundred difficulties that might have been prevented had the prefaces been carefully studied and the lessons presented in the sequence planned.

The true way, we believe, is to profit as much as possible by the helps that the authors have painstakingly provided. Suppose the class reads the Christmas story before Christmas arrives; what matter? Any selection worthy to have a place