Reviews and tests fulfill a double purpose for the learner:  they help to organize and make more usable the matter that has been learned, and they reveal success or failure in mastery.  They also serve the teacher as a measure of his success in teaching.  The review lesson should not be, as it often is, a mere repetition of as many facts from, previous lessons as time will permit to be covered.  It should present a new view of the subject.  It should deal with the great essential points, and so relate and organize them that the threefold aim of fruitful knowledge, right attitudes, and practical applications shall be stressed and made secure.

Guiding principles.—­If the section of matter under review deals with a series of events, such as the story of the migration of the Israelites from Egypt or the account of the ministry of Jesus, then the review lesson must pick out and emphasize those incidents and applications which should become a part of the permanent possession of the child’s mind from the study of this material.  These related points should be so linked together and so reimpressed that they will form a continuous view of the period or topic studied.  There is no place for the incidental nor for minute and unrelated detail in the review.

The teacher will need most careful preparation and planning to conduct a review.  He must have the entire field to be reviewed fully mastered and in his own mind as a unit, else he cannot lead the child back over it successfully.  He must work out a lesson plan which will secure interest and response on the part of his pupils.  Many review lessons drag, and are but endured by the class.  This may be accounted for by the fact that the review recitation often fails to do more than repeat old material.  It may also come from the fact that the children are asked details which they have forgotten or never knew, so that they are unable to take their part.  It may in some cases arise from the fact that the teacher is himself not ready for the review, and does not like review days.  Whatever may be the cause, the review that fails to catch interest or call forth enthusiasm has in so far failed of its purpose.  The minds of teacher and pupils should be at their best and concentration at its keenest for the review lesson.

ASSIGNMENT OF LESSON

No small part of the success of instruction depends on faithfulness and skill in assigning lessons.  Too often this is left for the very last moment of the class hour, when there is no time left for proper assignment and the teacher can give only the most hurried and incomplete directions.  Or, it may be that the only direction that is given is the exhortation to “be sure to prepare the lesson for next week.”  But this will not suffice.  We must not forget that children, especially the younger children, may not know just how to go to work upon the lesson, nor what to do in getting it.  It is hard for any young child to gather thought from the printed page, even after he has attained fair skill in reading; and it is doubly hard if the matter is difficult or unfamiliar, as is much of the material found in the church-school lessons.