3.  The application (or deductive) lesson; in which the aim is to make application of some general truth or lesson already known to particular problems or cases.

4.  The drill lesson; in which the aim is to give readiness and skill in fundamental facts or material that should be so well known as to be practically automatic in thought or memory.

5.  The appreciation lesson; in which the aim is to create a response of warmth and interest toward, or appreciation of, a person, object, situation, or the material studied.

6.  The review lesson; in, which the aim is to gather up, relate, and fix more permanently in the mind the lessons or facts that have been studied.

7.  The assignment lesson; in which help is rendered and interest inspired, for study of the next lesson.

THE INFORMATIONAL LESSON

The child at the beginning is devoid of all knowledge of and information about the many objects, activities, and relationships that fill his world.  He must come to know these.  His mind can develop no faster than it has the materials for thoughts, memories, ideas, and whatever else is to occupy his stream of thought.  He must therefore be supplied with information.  He must be given a fund of impressions, of facts, of knowledge to use in his thinking, feeling, and understanding.

To undertake to teach the child the deeper meanings and relationships of God to our lives without this necessary background of information is to confuse him and to fail ourselves as teachers.  For example, a certain primary lesson leaflet tells the children that the Egyptians made slaves out of the Israelites and that God led the Israelites out of this slavery.  But there had previously been no adequate preparation of the learners’ minds to understand who the Israelites or the Egyptians were, nor what slavery is.  The children lacked all basis of information to understand the situation described, and it could by no possibility possess meaning for them.

The use of the information lesson.—­It is not meant, of course, that when the chief purpose of a lesson is to give information no applications should be made or no interpretations given of the matter presented.  Yet the fact is that often the chief emphasis must be placed on information, and that for the moment other aims are secondary.  To illustrate:  When young children are first told the story of God creating the world the main purpose of the lesson is just to give them the story, and not to attempt instruction as to the power and wonder of creative wisdom, nor even at this time to stress the seventh day as a day of rest.  When the story of Moses bringing his people out of Egypt is told young children, the providence of God will be made evident, but the facts of the story itself and its enjoyment just as a story should not in early childhood be overshadowed by attempting to force the moral and religious applications too closely.