5.  What application, or deductive, lesson have you taught your class recently?  Was it a success?  Have you ever discovered a tendency in your teaching to have your class commit to memory some great truth, but fail in its application to real problems in their own lives?  What applications of religious truths have you recently made successfully in your class?

6.  What is your method or plan of assigning lessons?  Do you think that any part of the children’s failure to prepare their lessons may be due to imperfect assignments?  Will you make the assignment of the lessons that lie ahead one of your chief problems?

FOR FURTHER READING

Earhart, Types of Teaching.

Strayer, A Brief Course in the Teaching Process.

Hayward, The Lesson in Appreciation.

Knight, Some Principles of Teaching as Applied to the Sunday School.

Maxwell, The Observation of Teaching.

CHAPTER XII

METHODS USED IN THE RECITATION

The particular mode of procedure used in recitation will depend on the nature of the material, the age of the pupils, and the aim of the lesson.  For the church-school recitation period four different methods are chiefly used.  These are: 

1.  The topical method, in which the teacher suggests a topic of the lesson or asks a question and requires the pupil to go on in his own way and tell what he can about the point under discussion.

2.  The lecture method, in which the teacher himself discusses the topic of the lesson, presenting the facts, offering explanations or making applications as he judges the case may require.

3.  The question-and-answer, or discussion, method, in which the teacher leads in a half-formal conversation, asking questions and receiving answers either to test the pupil’s preparation or to develop the facts and meanings of the lesson.

4.  The story method, in which the teacher uses a story, told either in the words of the writer or in his own words, to convey the lesson.  The story method differs from the lecture method in that the story recounts some real or fancied situation or occurrence to convey the lesson, while the lecture depends more on explanation and analysis.

It may sometimes happen that an entire recitation will employ but one of these methods, the whole time being given either to reciting upon topics, to a lecture or discussion by the teacher, or to a series of questions and answers.  More commonly, however, the three methods are best when combined to supplement each other or to give variety to the instruction.

THE TOPICAL METHOD

There is really no absolute line of demarkation between the topical and the question-and-answer method.  The chief difference lies in the fact that the question deals with some one specific fact or point, while the topic requires the pupil to decide on what facts or points should come into the discussion, and, so make his own plan for the discussion.