The Dramatic Method of Teaching (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter viii geography the geography lesson gave us no trouble to dramatize and was particularly well adapted for being played as a game. The geography game began by being played in the desks with sand-modeling trays, and drawing in colors. Children would model a county or part of a country and cut out paper lighthouses, make paper boats and bridges or paper animals, and place them standing upright in the sand. Then, in turn, they would talk about them with their teacher. Again they would make colored drawings (of their own--each child originating according to his own mental impressions) to illustrate the lessons on towns or districts which had been given to them. For instance, one child, to illustrate a lesson on Reading, had drawn a large factory with horses and wagons outside. This, he explained, was a biscuit factory. Another large building appeared at the end of a roadway represented by two wavy lines. This he had labeled a jail--and so on. Our next step in the direction of geography games was suggested by a little Grade iii pupil. I discovered her one wet dinner hour with the map of the world spread out on the floor and a ring of small, eager children kneeling around it. She had a little black doll in a tiny toy boat on wheels, and she was pretending to bring it on a voyage from South Africa to England. All the while she kept up a string of sentences in squeaky broken English, supposed to be spoken by the doll. Incidentally and unconsciously she was giving her small audience a splendid idea of the various interesting things and places passed, and even climatic conditions; for she made the doll shiver when he got into colder latitudes. Funniest of all, when she landed him at the London Docks, she produced a little tin toy railway...