美国老师怎样让孩子爱英语--by John Holt ---------连载

爱无言

How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading

前 言
by 梁晓岚教授 （MSN: dragon_youth@hotmail.com）

最近翻出了一本大学时代我们的一本教材The Norton Reader 1977年的第四期。

我们当时的美国老师之一，一个美国的心理学硕士为我们选的。严格地来讲，她并不是一个很受欢迎的老师。她上课的时候 ，除了少数几个先进分子之外，大多数人都是在昏昏欲睡。现在想起来，也许是她的过于超前的期望和我们的以学习语言为主的目的不相容所致。她总是带着我们做一些纯理论的分析，而我们总是热衷于发现和记忆词汇的用法。不过她讲的很多故事倒是很好玩的。她刚毕业的时候没有找到工作，在地铁弹过吉他，还作为和平队（60年代的美国的一个组织形式，类似今天的中国的国务院汉办招聘的出国教汉语的志愿者）的一员到过非洲。后来又到了中国。

这位老师总是试图带着我们做一些纯理论的探讨，并且试图把理论或者Norton Reader上展现的理念和她自己的实践相结合。大约因为毕业不久，书生气比较重。当时她好像35岁，今天也应该至少是祖母级的人物了。

如今再看，明白她当时为何弃在众多传统教材不选，而独钟Norten Reader 了。里面有很多深受教师和学生欢迎的文章。而且很多十分新颖甚至超前的理论。更重要的是，这些理论全部来源于第一线的经验丰富的人员，而非闭门造车的纯研究人员（其危害和无效和可笑前面另有文章所及）。
其中一篇最有意思的就是一位关于培养孩子写作文的文章。

我们都很清楚，几乎所有的孩子都怕写作文。按照美国那种玩乐方法培养出来的孩子更甚。（联想到今天的快乐教育法，具体到英语学习，就是做游戏学英语和只说不练，几乎把所有的孩子都教成了读写障碍的倾向。（在早几年我几乎一年碰到一个，这两年则几乎占了一半以上。）而这个老师从培养习惯入手，他们班的孩子人人愿写，个个愿写。
可能令所有家长都会瞠目结舌的事实是，他的引导孩子喜欢写作文的方法竟是最原始的方法，他的，也是全班学生的一篇最得意的范文竟是描写学校被烧毁，老师被烧死的文章。

不是我对美音有什么成见。学英音不成转学美音，就像大家都在努力练习往五层楼跳，有的人口腔结构friendly，就跳到了五层，有的人相比较差一些，只能达到三层。那就到了三层在慢慢爬也行，总之他是上了楼了。可是如果一开始就把目标定在三层，那么可能用同样的力气，后者最多只能到达二层。

仔细比较会发现，即使在美国本土，越是社会主流，接近上层社会，他们的发音就越接近英音。美国人夸奖你的英语好，也绝不会像英国人一样，说“Your English is good.”，而是说：“You have British accent.”
很多人在外企干了五六年，面临升职，有机会接触到总公司或者本土总部的人士的时候，才会想到重新学习，找到英音。

尽管一直诋毁美音，但是我发现我的很多理念和方法都是很接近美国的。比如强调培养习惯等。不过照搬他们的做法，就像目前大多数机构和教师的做法，确实是很害人很弱智的（前面提过的读写障碍就是一种）。特别是这一套快乐学英语，禁写的作法实施以后。
中国英语教育史上对于英语的妖魔化和神化的轮回把广大英语学习者弄得苦不堪言。根本一条，就是在大众英语教育这个领域并没有真正的懂英语的人来深入。（目前在北京社会英语教育界从翻译转作教学的大约有三四个，都是出类拔萃的。我们的理念都差不多，都是深刻认识到英语的本质的。）

其实学英语说到底就是一个学习（技能的学习不同于数理化的学问的学习）。听说读写都是应该同时并进的。过分强调哪一方面都会造成恶劣的后果。以平常心态对待它就好了，既不必头悬梁锥刺骨，也不必疯狂，不必痛苦，也不必快乐。

本文最大的好处就是介绍了美国本土的英语教育，分析了学生学习过程的思维脉络。了解即好，并不完全适合中国国情。千万不要照搬。这种理念已经害了很多孩子了。
以下为正文，全文很长，分十次连载。文章简明易读，一般来说英文老师都看得懂。

爱无言

When I was teaching English at the Colorado Rocky Mountain School, I used to ask my students the kinds of questions that English teachers usually ask about reading assignments---questions designed to bring out the points that I had decided they should know. They, on their part, would try to get me to give them hints and clues as to what I wanted. It was a game of wits. I never gave may students an opportunity to say what they really thought about a book.

I gave vocabulary drills and quizzes too. I told my students that every times they came upon a work in their book they did not understand, they were to look it up in the dictionary. I even devised special kinds of vocabulary tests, allowing them to use their books to see how these words were used. but looking back, I realize that these tests, along with many of my methods, were foolish.

My sister was the first person who made me question my conventional ideas about teaching English. She had a son in the seventh grade in a fairly good public school. His teacher had asked the class to read Copper’s The Deerslayer. The choice was bad enough in itself; whether looking at man or nature, Cooper was superficial inaccurate and sentimental, and his writing is ponderous and ornate. But to make matters worse, this teacher had decided to give the book the microscope and x-ray treatment. He made the students look up and memorize not only the definitions but the derivations of every big word that came along—and there were plenty. Every chapter was followed by close questioning and testing to make sure the students “understood” everything.


Being then as I said, conventional, I began to defend the teacher, who was a good friend of mine, against my sister’s criticisms. The argument soon grew hot. What was wrong with making sure that children understood everything they read? My sister answered that until this class her boy had always loved reading, and had read a lot on his own he had stopped .(He was not really to start again for many years )

爱无言

美国老师怎样让孩子爱英语---连载2
How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading 转载自：http.englishclass.blog.sohu.com

Unfortunately, we English teachers are easily hung up on the matter of understanding. Why should children understand every thing the read? Why should anyone? Does anyone? I don’t and I never did. I was always reading books that teachers would have said were“ too hard ” for me, books full of words I didn’t know. That‘s how I go to be a good teacher. When about ten, I read all the D’Artagnan stories and loved them. It didn’t trouble me in the least that I didn’t know why France was at war with England or who was quarreling with whom in the French court or why the Musketeers should always be at odds with Cardinal Richelieu’s men. I didn’t even know who the Cardinal was, except that he was a dangerous and powerful man that my friends had to watch out for. This was all I needed to know.

Having said this ,I will now say that I think a big, unabridged dictionary is a fine thing to have in any home or classroom. No book is more fun to browse around in---if you’re not made to. Children, depending on their age, will find many pleasant and interesting things to do with a big dictionary. They can look up funny sounding words, which the like , or words that nobody else in the class has ever heard of ,which the like , ore long words, which they like, or forbidden words, which the like best of all. At a certain age, and particularly with a little encouragement from parents or teachers , they may become very interested in where words came from and when the came into the language and how thief meanings have changed over the years. But exploring for the fun of it is very different from looking up words out of your reading because you’re going to get into trouble with your teacher if you don’t.

While teaching fifth grade two years or so after the argument with my sister .I began to think again about reading. The children in my class were supposed to fill out a card---just the title and author and a one=sentence summary ===for every book they read. I was not running a competition to see which child could read the most books, a competition that almost always leads to cheating. I just wanted to know what the children were reading. After a while it became clear that many of these very bright kids, form highly literate and even literary backgrounds, read very few books and deeply disliked reading. Why should this be ?

At that time I was coming to realize, as I described in my book How Children Fail, that for most children school was a place of danger, and their main business in school was staying out of danger as much as possible. I now began to see also that books were among the most dangerous things in school.

From the very beginning of school we make books and reading a constant source of possible failure and public humiliation. When children are little we make them read aloud, before the teacher and other children, so that we can be sure the “know” all the words the are reading. This means that when they don’t know a word , they are going to make a mistake, right in front of everyone. Instantly they are made to realize that they have done something wrong. Perhaps some of the other children will began to wave their hands and say, “Ooooh! O-o-o-oh!” Perhaps they will just giggle, or nudge each other, or make a face. Perhaps the teacher will say, “Are you sure?” or ask someone else what he thinks. Or perhaps , if the teacher is kindly, she will just smile a sweet , sad smile----often one of the most painful punishments a child can suffer in school. In any case, the child who has made the mistake knows he has made it, and feels foolish, stupid, and ashamed, just as any of us would in his shoes.

爱无言

找不到后面的了。John Holt的几本书在美国非常畅销。

爱无言

http://www.holtgws.com/johnholtpage.html

爱无言

http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=9182743

爱无言

《孩子是如何学习的》可惜都无货。

一米妈妈

谢谢推荐！

ilovexiaonuo

http://product.dangdang.com/prod ... &ref=search-0-A
孩子是如何学习的，新版
google上还能找到他的另一本书How children fail，英文PDF,即他在《孩子是如何学习的》一书中反复提到的《孩子是如何失败的》

期待“美国老师怎样让孩子爱英语”的后文

爱无言

哇，太好了，谢谢！ 新版和这个的英文版我都想要呢！《孩子是如何学习的》英文版有吗？

美国老师如何让孩子爱英语，我找不到后文了。 我怀疑是这两本书的某一部分摘抄。

爱无言

http://gyanpedia.in/tft/Resources/books/HCF.pdf

英文PDF, 《孩子是如何失败的》

爱无言

http://www.ibe.unesco.org/public ... riesPdf/prac07e.pdf

英文PDF, 《孩子是如何学习的》

爱无言

John Holt

HOW TEACHERS MAKE CHILDREN HATE READING

When I was teaching English at the Colorado Rocky Mountain School, I used to ask my students the kinds of questions that English teachers usually ask about reading assignments-questions designed to bring out the points that I had decided they should know. They, on their part, would try to get me to give them hints and clues as to what I wanted. It was a game of wits. I never gave my students an opportunity to say what they really thought about a book.
I gave vocabulary drills and quizzes too. I told my students that every time they came upon a word in their book they did not understand, they were to look it up in the dictionary. I even devised special kinds of vocabulary tests, allowing them to use their books to see how the words were used. But looking back, I realize that these tests, along with many of my methods, were foolish.
My sister was the first person who made me question my conventional ideas about teaching English. She had a son in the seventh grade in a fairly good public school. His teacher had asked the class to read Cooper's The Deerslayer.1
The choice was bad enough in itself; whether looking at man or nature, Cooper was superficial, inaccurate and sentimental, and his writing is ponderous and ornate. But to make matters worse, this,teacher had decided to give the book the microscope and x-ray treatment. He made the students look up and memorize not only the definitions but the derivations of every big word that came along-and there were plenty. Every chapter was fol lowed by close questioning and testing to make sure the students "under stood" everything.
Being then, as I said, conventional, I began to defend the teacher, who was a good friend of mine, against my sister's criticisms. The argument soon grew hot. What was wrong with making sure that children understood everything they read? My sister answered that until this year her boy had always loved reading, and had read a lot on his own; now he had stopped. (He was not re ally to start again for many years.)
Still I persisted. If children didn't look up the words they didn't know, how would they ever learn them? My sister said, "Don't be sillyl When you were little you had a huge vocabulary, and were always reading very grown-up books. When did you ever look up a word in a dictionary?"
She had me. I don't know that we had a dictionary at home; if we did, I didn't use it. I don't use one today. In my life I doubt that I have looked up as many as fifty words, perhaps not even half that.

爱无言

http://www.seaford.k12.de.us/es/hbrake/AP%20WORLD%20LITERATURE/Imports/Apex%20documents/Texts/Section%202%20Texts/How%20Teachers%20Make%20Childen%20Hate%20Teaching.rtf

这个找到了，就在这个页面，可是无法copy了，原页面字体太小，无法看哎！

爱无言

终于用一个笨办法给复制下来了。现在贴这里，完成这个帖子。:P

爱无言

Since then I have talked about this with a number of teachers. More than once I have said, "According to tests, educated and literate people like you have a vocabulary of about twenty-five thousand words. How many of these did you learn by looking them up in a dictionary?" They usually are startled. Few claim to have looked up even as many as a thousand. How did they learn the rest?
They learned them just as they learned to talk- by meeting words over and over again, in different contexts, until they saw how they fitted.
Unfortunately, we English teachers are easily hung up on this matter of understanding. Why should children understand everything they read? Why should anyone? Does anyone? I don't, and I never did. I was always reading books that teachers would have said were "too hard" for me, books full of words I didn't know. That's how I got to bea good reader. When about ten, I read all the D'Artagnan stories2
and loved them. It didn't trouble me in the least that I didn't know why France was at war with England or who was quar reling with whom in the French court or why the Musketeers should always be at odds with Cardinal Richelieu's men. I didn't even know who the Cardi nal was, except that he was a dangerous and powerful man that my friends had to watch out for. This was all I needed to know.
Having said this, I will now say that I think a big, unabridged dictionary is a fine thing to have in any home or classroom. No book is more fun to browse around in-if you're not made to. Children, depending on their age, will find many pleasant and interesting things to do with a big dictionary. They can look up funny-sounding words, which they like, or words that nobody else in the class has ever heard of, which they like, or long words, which they like, or forbidden words, which they like best of all. At a certain age, and particularly with a little encouragement from parents or teachers, they may become very interested in where words came from and when they came into the language and how their meanings have changed over the years. But exploring for the fun of it is very different from looking up words out of your reading because you're going to get into trouble with your teacher if you don't.
While teaching fifth grade two years or so after the argument with my sis ter, I began to think again about reading. The children in my class were supposed to fill out a card-just the title and author and a one-sentence sum mary-for every book they read. I was not running a competition to see which child could read the most books, a competition that almost always leads to cheating. I just wanted to know what the children were reading. Af ter a while it became clear that many of these very bright kids, from highly literate and even literary backgrounds, read very few books and deeply dis liked reading. Why should this be?

爱无言

At this time I was coming to realize, as I described in my book How Chilo dren Fail, that for most children school was a place of danger, and their main business in school was staying out of danger as much as possible. I now began to see also that books were among the most dangerous things in school.
From the very beginning of school we make books and reading a constant source of possible failure and public humiliation. When children are little we make them read aloud, before the teacher and other children, so that we can be sure they "know" all the words they are reading. This means that when they don't know a word, they are going to make a mistake, right in front of everyone. Instantly they are made to realize that they have done something wrong. Perhaps some of the other children will begin to wave their hands and say, "Ooooh! O-o-o-oh!" Perhaps they will just giggle, or nudge each other, or make a face. Perhaps the teacher will say, "Are you sure?" or ask someone else what he thinks. Or perhaps, if the teacher is kindly, she will just smile a sweet, sad smile-often one of the most painful punishments a child can suf fer in school. In any case, the child who has made the mistake knows he has made it, and feels foolish, stupid, and ashamed, just as any of us would in his shoes.
Before long many children associate books and reading with mistakes, real or feared, and penalties and humiliation. This may not seem sensible, but it is natural. Mark Twain once said that a cat that sat on a hot stove lid would never sit on one again- but it would never sit on a cold one either. As true of children as of cats. If they, so to speak, sit on a hot book a few times, if books cause them humiliation and pain, they are likely to decide that the safest thing to do is to leave all books alone.

爱无言

After having taught fifth-grade classes for four years I felt quite sure of
this theory. In my next class were many children who had had great trouble with schoolwork, particularly reading. I decided to try at all costs to rid them of their fear and dislike of books, and to get them to read oftener and more adventurously.
One day soon after school had started, I said-to them, "Now I'm going to say something about reading that you have probably never heard a teacher say before. I would like you to read a lot of books this year, but I want you to read them only for pleasure. I am not going to ask you questions to find out whether you understand the books or not. If you understand enough of a book to enjoy it and want to go on reading it, that's enough for me. Also I'm not going to ask you what words mean.
"Finally," I said, "I don't want you to feel that just because you start a book, you have to finish it. Give an author thirty or forty pages or so to get his story going: Then if you don't like the characters and don't care what happens to them, close the book, put it away, and get another. I don't care whether the books are easy or hard, short or long, as long as you enjoy them. Furthermore I'm putting all this in a letter to your parents, so they won't feel they have to quiz and heckle you about books at home."
The children sat stunned and silent. Was this a teacher talking? One girl, who had just come to us from a school where she had had a very hard time, and who proved to be one of the most interesting, lively, and intelligent chil dren I have ever known, looked at me steadily for a long time after I had find that?" I said just as solemnly, "I mean every word of it." .
Apparently she decided to believe me. The first book she read was Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas, not a hard book even for most third graders. For a while she read a number of books on this level. Perhaps she was clearing up some confusion about reading that her teachers, in their hurry to get her up to "grade level," had never given her enough time to clear up. After she had been in the class six weeks or so and we had become good friends, I very tentatively suggested that, since she was a skillful rider and loved horses, she might like to read National Velvet. 3
I made my sell as soft as possible, saying only that it was about a girl who loved and rode horses, and that if she didn't like it, she could put it back. She tried it, and though she must have found it quite a bit harder than what she had been reading, fin-

ished it and liked it very much.
.
During the spring she really astonished me, however. One day, in one of our many free periods, she was reading at her desk. From a glimpse of the il lustrations I thought I knew what the book was. I said to myself, "It can't be," and went to take a closer look. Sure enough, she was reading Moby Dick, in the edition with woodcuts by Rockwell Kent. When I came close to her desk she looked up. I said, "Are you really reading that?" She said she was. I said, "Do you like it?" She said, "Oh, yes, it's neat!" I said, "Don't you find parts of it rather heavy going?" She answered, "Oh, sure, but I just skip over those parts and go on to the next good part."
This is exactly what reading should be and in school so seldom is-an ex citing, joyous adventure. Find something, dive into it, take the good parts, skip the bad parts, get what you can out of it, go on to something else. How different is our mean-spirited, picky insistence that every child get every last little scrap of "understanding" that can be dug out of a book.
For teachers who really enjoy doing it, and will do it with gusto, reading aloud is a very good idea. I have found that not just fifth graders but even ninth and eleventh graders enjoy it. Jack London's "To ,Build a Fire" is a good read aloud story. So are ghost stories, and "August Heat," by W. F. Harvey, and "The Monkey's Paw," by W. W. Jacobs, are among the best. Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" is sure-fire, and will raise all kinds of questions for discussion and ar gument.4 Because of a TV program they had seen and that excited them, I once started reading my fifth graders William Golding's Lord of the Flies, 5
thinking to read only a few chapters, but they made me read it to the end.
In my early fifth-grade classes the children usually were of high IQ, came from literate backgrounds and were generally felt to be succeeding in school. Yet it was astonishingly hard for most of those children to express themselves in speech or in writing. I have known a number of five-year-olds who were con siderably more articulate than most of the fifth graders I have known in school.

爱无言

Asked to speak, my fifth graders were covered with embarrassment; many re fused altogether. Asked to write, they would sit for minutes on end, staring at the paper. It was hard for most of them to get down a half page of writing, even on what seemed to be interesting topics or topics they chose themselves.
In desperation I hit on a device that I named the Composition Derby. I di vided the class into teams, and told them that when I said, "Go," they were to start writing something. It could be about anything they wanted, but it had to be about something-they couldn't just write "dog dog dog dog" on the pa per. It could be true stories, descriptions of people or places or events, wishes, made-up stories, dreams-anything they liked. Spelling didn't count, so they didn't have to worry about it. When I said, "Stop," they were to stop and count up the words they had written. The team that wrote the most words would win the derby.

It was a success in many ways and for many reasons. The first surprise was
25
that the two children who consistently wrote the most words were two of the least successful students in the class. They were bright, but they had always had a very hard time in school. Both were very bad spellers, and worrying about this had slowed down their writing without improving their spelling. When they were free of this worry and could let themselves go, they found hidden and unsuspected talents.
One of the two, a very driven and anxious little boy, used to write long ad ventures, or misadventures, in which I was the central character- "The Day Mr. Holt Went to Jail," "The Day Mr. Holt Fell Into the Hole," "The Day Mr. Holt Got Run Over," and so on. These were very funny, and the class en joyed hearing me read them aloud. One day I asked the class to write a derby on a topic I would give them. They groaned; they liked picking their own. "Wait till you hear it," I said. "It's 'The Day the School Burned Down.' "
With a shout of approval and joy they went to work, and wrote furiously for 20 minutes or more, laughing and chuckling as they wrote. The papers were all much alike; in them the children danced around the burning building, throwing in books and driving me and the other teachers back in when we tried to escape.
In our first derby the class wrote an average of about ten words a minute; after a few months their average was over 20. Some of the slower writers tripled their output. Even the slowest, one of whom was the best student in the class, were writing 15 words a minute. More important, almost all the children enjoyed the derbies and wrote interesting things.
Some time later I learned that Professor S. 1. Hayakawa, teaching fresh man English, had invented a better technique. Every day in class he asked his students to write without stopping for about half an hour. They could write on whatever topic or topics they chose, but the important thing was not to stop. If they ran dry, they were to copy their last sentence over and over again until new ideas came. Usually they came before the sentence had been copied once. I use this idea in my own classes, and call this kind of paper a Non-Stop. Sometimes I ask students to write a Non-Stop on an assigned topic, more often on anything they choose. Once in a while I ask them to count up how many words they have written, though I rarely ask them to tell me; it is for their own information. Sometimes these papers are to be handed in; often they are what I call private papers, for the students' eyes alone.
The private paper has proved very useful. In the first place, in any English class-certainly any large English class-if the amount the students write is limited by what the teacher can find time to correct, or even to read, the stu dents will not write nearly enough. The only remedy is to have them write a great deal that the teacher does not read. In the second place, students writ ing for themselves will write about many things that they would never write on a paper fo be himded in, once they have learned (sometimes it takes a while) that the teacher means what he says about the papers' being private. This is important, not just because it enables them to get things off their chest, but also because they are most likely to write well, and to pay attention to how they write, when they are writing about something important to them.
Some English teachers, when they first hear about private papers, object that students do not benefit from writing papers unless the papers are cor rected. I disagree for several reasons. First, most students, particularly poor students, d6 not read the corrections on their papers; it is boring, even painful. Second, even when they do read these corrections, they do not get much help from them, do not build the teacher's suggestions into their writ ing. This is true even when they really believe the teacher knows what he is talking about. '

爱无言

Third, and most important, we learn to write by writing, not by reading other people's ideas about writing. What most students need above all else is practice in writing, and particularly in writing about things that matter to them, so that they will begin to feel the satisfaction that comes from getting important thoughts down in words and will care about stating these thoughts forcefully and clearly.
Teachers of English-or, as some schools say (ugh!), Language Arts spend a lot of time and effort on spelling. Most of it is wasted; it does little good, and often more harm than good. We should ask ourselves, "How do good spellers spell? What do they do when they are not sure which spelling of a word is right?" I have asked this of a number of good spellers. Their an swer never varies. They do not rush for a dictionary or rack their brains trying to remember some rules. They write down the word both ways, or several ways, look at them and pick the one that looks best. Usually they are right.
Good spellers know what words look like and even, in their writing mus cles, feel like. They have a good set of word images in their minds, and are willing to trust these images. The things we do to "teach" spelling to children do little to develop these skills or talents, and much to destroy them or pre vent them from developing.
The first and worst thing we do is to make children anxious about spelling.
We treat a misspelled word like a crime and penalize the misspeller severely; many teachers talk of making children develop a "spelling conscience," and fail otherwise excellent papers because of a few spelling mistakes, This is self defeating. When we are anxious, we don't perceive clearly or remember what we once perceived. Everyone knows how hard it is to recall even simple things when under emotional pressure; the harder we rack our brains, the less easy it is to find what we are looking for. If we are anxious enough, we will not trust the messages that memory sends us. Many children spell badly because although their first hunches about .how to spell a word may be cor rect, they are afraid to trust them. I have often seen on children's papers a word correctly spelled, then crossed out and misspelled.
There are some tricks that might help children get sharper word images.
Some teachers may be using them. One is the trick of air writing; that is, of "writing" a word in the air with a finger and "seeing" the image so formed. I did this quite a bit with fifth graders, using either the air or the top of a desk, on which their fingers left no mark. Many of them were tremendously ex cited by this. I can still hear them saying, "There's nothing there, but I can see it!" It seemed like black magic. I remember that when I was little I loved to write in the air. It was effortless, voluptuous, satisfying, and it was fun to see the word appear in the air. I used to write "Money Money Money," not so much because I didn't have any as because I liked the way it felt, particularly that y at the end, with its swooping tail.
Another thing to help sharpen children's image-making machinery is tak ing very quick looks at words-or other things. The conventional machine for doing this is the tachistoscope. But these are expensive, so expensive that most children can have few chances to use them, if any at all. With some three-by-five and four-by-eight file cards you can get the same effect. On the little cards you put the words or the pictures that the child is going to look at. You hold the larger card over the card to be read, uncpver it for a split second with a quick wrist motion, then cover it up again. Thus you have a tachisto scope that costs one cent and that any child can work by himself.
Once when substituting in a first-grade class, I thought that the children, who were just beginning to read and write, might enjoy some of the kind of free, nonstop writing that my fifth graders had. One day about 40 minutes be fore lunch, I asked them all to take pencil and pqper and start writing about anything they wanted to. They seemed to like the idea, but right away one . child said anxiously, "Suppose we can't spell a word."
"Don't worry about it," I said. "Just spell it the best way you can."

A heavy silence settled on the room. All I could see were still pencils and
40
anxious faces. This was clearly not the right approach. So I said, "All right, I'll tell you what we'll do. Any time you want to know how to spell a word, tell me and I'll write it on the board."
They breathed a sigh of relief and went to work. Soon requests for words were coming fast; as soon as I wrote one, someone asked me another. By lunchtime, when most of the children were still busily writing, the board was full. What was interesting was that most of the words they had asked for were much longer and more complicated than anything in their reading books or workbooks. Freed from worry about spelling, they were willing to use the most difficult and interesting words that they knew.
The words were still on the board when we began school next day. Before I began to erase them, I said to the children, "Listen, everyone. I have to erase these words, but before I do, just out of curiosity, I'd like to see if you re member some of them."