A CHAPTER IX. A DAILY JOURNAL. SCHOOL journal of events, containing rec ord of recitations, visitors, of any deviation from the usual order, any pleasant lessons, accidents, and incidents, and kept in turn by the pupils, furnishes a pleasant and profitable addition to the interest of school. Well-managed, it may even be made an effective aid to discipline, but not as a chronicle of misdeeds or personal failures. Each pupil, as he takes his turn at the school journal, should try to make the record look well and sound well; his name should be signed to his record, which may be read aloud each evening and approved, or corrected by the school. Every pupil would be benefited by such journal-keeping for himself. On some convenient day, at the last hour of school-session, require the whole class to make a record of the day's events from memory. At the next lesson, ask for the reading of several or all of these, to show the pupils themselves the 106 A DAILY JOURNAL. differences in observation. Allow free criticism of the papers. Require the class, individually, to keep a daily journal for a week and to read the same aloud, as a composition exercise. Any child that can write may do this. CHAPTER X. PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES. N any reading-lesson from any reading-book, teresting exercises on phrases are possible. Exercise 1: "The hen is by the brook with her chickens." "What words tell where the hen is?' 66 'By the brook." "Can you think of any other word to use with brook that would tell where, too?" 66 'In the brook." "Yes, and what else?" "Across the brook, down the brook, up the brook, out of the brook, to the brook, along the brook, from the brook," etc. Now, will you use some of these words with another word, not brook?" "By the house, in the field, to the garden," etc. "Out of the? down the- ? across the —? along the?" etc., etc. "Do you see any other words in your lesson that belong together like these, and tell where, or how? See if you can find all such in your next lesson, and I will tell you something else to do with them." Exercise 2: "Can you find any such words in the following?" "As I walked out yesterday, I saw a large walnut grove which grew where the land sloped downward gently. There were many ripe nuts scattered about; indeed, their round yellow rinds dotted the grass everywhere. I gathered several particularly fine ones, sat down, and cracked them; the kernels were very sweet, but I stained my lips and my fingers so that I cannot go out until the color wears off." Ask older pupils to rewrite the foregoing paragraph, using different words for "where the land," etc., "scattered about," and other words, telling on what " I sat," etc.; draw attention frequently to such groups of words (phrases) and show how much we use them when we talk, and · what kind of things we tell with them. Show pupils who read books and understand construction practically, how much of the beauty of good writing is often in these little phrases. Examples from the Psalms: "In the wilderness in a solitary way." "Like rain upon the mown grass.' Upon the top of the mountain." " Song in the night." "The thickets of the forest." "Doves to their windows." "A banner upon the top of the high mountain." "Above the heights of the clouds." 66 Three berries in the top of the uttermost "A possession for the bittern." 66 Instead of the thorn." From Job: "Under the shady tree." "A companion to owls." "In a vision of the night." "The sweet influences of Pleiades." "In the covert of the reed." "Write the phrase which I shall give you (select from the foregoing); think about it, and write a short composition in which you express all the thoughts suggested by it." |