The greatest need of the primary school to-day is some positive content or subject matter of instruction. The popular conception of such a school is that its main function is to teach the young child to read, write, and cipher. That is, that it has to do mainly with the formal aspects of language and numbers. So long as a certain amount of facility is gained in these formal arts, there is little disposition to demand anything more. Even so great an authority as the Committee of Fifteen has championed this view, and has given as its deliberate judgment that the first four years of school life should be devoted to the mastery of the formal phases of instruction. While it may be contended that it is not meant to exclude the giving of a positive subject matter, still it is interpreted as sanctioning the present obvious over-emphasis of the formal side of language in our primary schools. A strict conformity to this formal program would mean that the first four years of school life, the most impressionable[6] period in the pupil's school career, are to be empty of any real subject matter. The mastery of written and printed forms is to be set up as an end in itself, losing sight of the fact that they are but means for conveying the thought, feelings, experiences, and aspirations of the race from one generation to another. When we consider what the child at the age of six or seven really is; when we consider his love of story, his hunger for the concrete material of knowledge, his deep interest in the widening of his experience,—it is evident that such a course is out of all harmony with his real nature. It is the giving of stones when the cry is for bread. It is even worse than the proverbial making of bricks without straw. It is attempting to make bricks with straw alone.

This collection brings together the work of archivists, librarians, museum professionals, and other educators who evoke the power of primary sources to teach information literacy skills to a variety of audiences.

This book includes full coverage of the content of professional studies modules and goes beyond to support trainees on placements and in their learning on the course.

Ripped from middle-class life in Philadelphia, and transplanted to a single-parent household in the segregated south, Sarah, a precocious black child struggles to be the master of her fate. She refuses to accept the segregation that tries to confine herÑa system her mother accepts as the southern way of life. A brave memoir that testifies to the authorÕs fiery spirit and sense of self that sustained her through family, social and cultural upheavals.

This text covers all the aspiring or busy teacher needs to know about the basic methods of primary teaching and provides more besides. There are sectioins on basic principles, organization, planning, working with children, teaching strategies, methods, resources, assessment and working with others. Individual topics range from being gender aware, to lesson planning, giving explanations, managing large classes, using the school compound and keeping records. All contain pratical suggestions. Student teachers in training and newly qualified or unqualified teachers should find them helpful. Experienced primary teachers should also find the book a resource to improve their professional practice, either working on their own, or in groups for in-service training.

This book has been replaced by Assessment for Reading Instruction, Fourth Edition, ISBN 978-1-4625-4157-7.