Have your pupils asked questions showing that they are thinking?  When such questions are asked, how do you treat them?

4.  What lessons of recent date in your work have you in mind which especially required the use of imagination?  Can you judge the degree to which the descriptive parts of the lessons appeal to your pupils as real?

5.  How successfully do you feel that you are applying the principles for the use of the imagination?  Do you definitely seek to apply these principles in your lessons?  Which of these is probably the hardest to apply?  What is your method of seeking its application?

6.  Are your pupils good in memory work?  Do you ever give them material to memorize the meaning of which is not wholly clear to them?  What help do you give the children when you assign them memory work?  Do you instruct them how to memorize what you assign?  To what extent are you following the laws of memory as stated in the chapter?

FOR FURTHER READING

Betts, The Mind and Its Education.

Dewey, How We Think.

Coe, Education in Religion and Morals.

CHAPTER XI

TYPES OF TEACHING

One of the surest tests of the skillful teacher is his ability to adapt his instruction to the child, to the subject matter, and to the occasion—­that is, to the aim.  Teaching must differ in its type with the age; the primary child and the older youth require different methods.  It must differ with the kind of material to be presented; a lesson whose chief aim is to give information must be differently presented from a lesson whose aim is to enforce some moral or religious truth.  It must differ with the occasion; a lesson taught a group of children who have had no previous study or preparation on it will demand different treatment from a lesson which has had careful study.

Types of lessons.—­Several clearly recognized types of lessons are commonly employed by teachers in both school and church-school classes.  No one of these lesson types can be said to be best in the sense that it should be used to the exclusion of the others.  All are required.  Several may even be employed in the same recitation period.  The teacher should, however, know which type he is employing at any given stage of his instruction, and why he is using this type in preference to another type of teaching.  The following are the chief lesson types that will be found serviceable in most church school classes: 

1.  The informational lesson; in which the immediate aim is to supply the mind with new knowledge or facts needed as a part of the equipment of thought and understanding.

2.  The developmental (or inductive) lesson; in which the aim is to lead the child through his own investigation and thinking to use the information already in his possession as a basis for discovering new truth or meaning.