Ella L Kelly Teaching Notebook

subtraction tables and letters. A child should be taught the different styles of printing, writing at the same time instead of giving first small print, then large letters, italics and script last. It will be more easily learned by comparison of the different characters. Teachers of languages say that it is easier to study two or three languages at the same time. Some say that we cannot know our own language well unless we know some other. It is one thing to get an impression there and another to keep it after it is received. Be sure to train pupils how to study and teach them that a great deal of that which they call study is not study at all. Tell them to study a lesson and after they have read it over, put it aside and think of something else. Never get in the habit of looking a lesson over just before the recitation begins. Too many pupils fix it on the attention and

hold it there just long enough to make a recitatation. When a subject has been studied for two or three weeks it is better to take a new subject and let that one rest awhile. Then after a week or two let the class review. This will be more profitable than to take it up at once. The great difference between people is the use of the mind. At the end of a term, if you can tell that you have trained yourself to pursue a study five minutes longer than at the commencement it will be a great triumph.

If a person relates a thing just as it is told to him, it shows that he has {Reflective} used no reasoning power. The reflective powers are divided into three classes: the judgment, reason, and imagination Case of teachers at an Institute. Read page after page. No use of judgment or reasoning faculties. If a child is asked why a thing is so he will sometimes say, "Because the book says so". We form our judgment after many perceptions Children are constantly forming judgments

which are rapid and accurate. It is difficult to draw the between judgment and reasoning. It takes a long time to study different processes of reasoning. Reasoning is a combination of judgments which form a conclusion. Another way of reasoning is by [space] judging that if a certain thing has been the case so coninually as shown by universal experince and constant observation we come to a conclusion without trying. Children reason in another way. They believe what their parents, teachers and books tell them without thinking any more about it. This is a kind of passion belief and should not be encouraged. They should be encouraged to try thins for themselves thereby making the facts thoroughly their own. We form our judgments after many perceptions. A child puts his finger in a flame. He forms a judgment about it. Then he trys it again

by putting his hand near the stove. Another judgment is formed. After a while, after many judgments, he learns to be careful how he touches these things. We should endeavor to have our pupils form judgments rapidly and accurately. It is difficult to draw the line between judgment and reasoning. The difference between explain and illustrate is not carefully observed. By too much explanation, we do not help the pupil. We do too much for him. Illustration appeals to the perceptions . When children are about ten years old they commence to judge. Care must be taken, that children are not trained to be machines. Make them to think. Ask them questions. What do you think about it? What do you see?

We recall a thing; then remember it and then the imagination dodges in and holds up a lamp which shines on it. A tableau would not mean much to us without the light of the imagination helping us to see it. It does not create new things but takes the old conceptions {Imagination} and makes new combinations. A painter starts out in the summer and makes a sketch of a tree in this place. He finds an old ruin in another place; here, a rough old stump and there some other object of interest. When he comes back he puts these altogether and makes a beautiful picture. We could not describe any thing to a blind person who had never been able to see for we would have nothing by which to give a description. There should be a distinct line drawn between the memory and the imagination. There is a difference between the two. Memory tells things as they should be. Imagination tells things as we want