Bridgewater State University - Alpha Yearbook (Bridgewater, MA)

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NoRMAL OFFERING 15 THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL. BRIEFLY stated the scope of the work in this course includes C13 general foundation for the first year, C25 specialized work on majors and general work on minors for the second and third years. The groups we have adopted, each subject in a group being a major, are these: 1. Geography, history, and civics. 2. Geography, science Cgeneralj. 3. Mathematics, science. 4. English, history and civics. 5. English, geography. 6. English, a modern language. 7. Special combinations of any of the above subjects with gardening or playground work or athletics. The student elects one group. The required professional studies, psychology, school management, practice teaching, etc., are also majors. It should be understood that this grouping having for its aim preparation for departmental teaching is tentative in the sense that further light is likely to be shed upon our problems as we try out these plans, and prompt modification or readjustment will re- sult from suggestions of sound experience. C. R. S. NATURE STUDY. HE elementary course is economic. The aim is to give pupils the power to plan, plant and cultivate a vegetable garden. To do this, they must test seeds, know and destroy weeds, recog- nize helpful and harmful insects, know the elements of plant physiology. The intermediate course devotes two terms to biology and one to gardening. The elective second year includes grafting, budding, pruning, production of ornamental plants, supervision of school gardens, plans for school grounds. The kindergarten course prepares the students to use the nature study outline in Bulletin No. 14 of the Massachusetts State Board of Education. F. I. D. PRACTICAL TRAINING. TUDENTS in the elementary and kindergarten-primary depart- ments began observation in the training school Sept. 1917, as a means of emphasizing the vocational character of the Normal School Courses. An afternoon session of the kindergarten has re- opened that grade for observation. Departmental work incident to Junior High School organization is presented in the upper gram-

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14 NORMAL OFFERING GEOGRAPHY. HE school is offering three diferent courses in geography. The two-year students are taking work needed for the first six grades, while the three-year students are preparing especially for the Junior High School. An advanced elective course is oiered for students looking toward supervision or departmental work. Thirty new stereoscopes with several hundred stereographs have been recently added to the geographical apparatus. These are proving a very useful supplement to the valuable collection of lantern slides which have been in use for several years. Several new sets of wall maps, diagrams, text and reference books have been among the more recent acquisitions of the de- partment. C. P. S. 1 PHYSIOGRAPHY. HIS course includes laboratory, iield and class study of com- mon minerals and rocks, agents of change, as heat, air, water and iceg typical formations, as strata, dikes and veins, the properties of, changes in, and improvements of soilsg the making of quicklime, plaster of Paris and cementsg the smelting of ores, the preparation of mineral pigments and quarrying of building stone. Study of physiographic structures and regions in North America as a basis for understanding the present distribution and activities of its inhabitants. The subject opens the students' eyes to the order and adaptability of inorganic nature and makes geo- graphy an interesting because intelligible subject. H. P. S. PENMANSHIP. HE value of a good handwriting cannot accurately be esti- mated. As a commercial asset it is worth much more than it costs to acquire, and as a concrete indication it always shows that its possessor is careful, industrious and systematic. It is more than an accomplishment, it is a modern need and is often a passport to a better position. Good penmanship cannot be bought nor sold as a commodity in the market, but is acquired only by patient, per- sistent practice, and retained by cultivating the habit, early in life, of being painstaking and careful. C. E. D.

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16 NORLMAL OFFERINZG mar grades. Opportunity for observation in all grades is now given to Class B. Randolph, Wareham and Middleboro have added three schools to the district for practice teaching. Standish Manor School, Halifax, is open to students interested in speech defects and other special problems of that school. C. A. N. DRAMATIZATION. HE Reading Department has been emphasizing the Work of dramatization throughout the grades. The students are taught to recognize the dramatic element in all literature taught as reading lessons in the grades and to develop the dramatic in- stinct in children. So much of the teaching of reading is merely a process for in- crasing the child's reading vocabulary and not an interpretation of the thought and feeling of an author. Dramatizing is reading in the fullest sense. After the child has pictured in his imagination the thoughts and ideas of the author and has shown by oral reading that he has pictured the scene, he then dramatizes the scene, thus from reading about the actor, he becomes the actor. This is realistic reading. It also serves as a means for the teacher to ascertain the real conception of the child which cannot always be obtained from the oral read- mg. This Work is especially helpful in the Junior High School Where the child has reached the self-conscious stage. In developing the dramatic instinct in children, We make them forget themselves. We train them in unconscious reasoning for it is the insight of one mind into another. . A It has been said that all sympathy, all union of ourselves With the ideals and struggles of our race are tracable to imagination and dramatic instinct. L. A. M. LITERATURE DEPARTMENT. HE Literature Department is equipped With its own library of reference and text-books for use in classes preparing to teach in elementary and grammar grades. This departmental library includes stories, such as King Arthur and Arabian Nights, for reading in children's classes, books of children's poems to be