Beginners' Book in Language Part 19

3. What might he have said that he left out?

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN UNFINISHED STORY]

=Oral Exercise.= 1. You and a cla.s.smate may now play that you are the two boys in the first picture. Make believe that you are just arriving at the lake on your bicycles. Jump off and lean them against trees.[56]

Talk about the lake and the beautiful day. Look the boat over and talk about your plan to go rowing. Talk about where to leave the bicycles.

Decide to have the dog watch them. Explain this to the dog. Tell him you are sorry that he cannot go along. Then untie the boat, jump in, and push off. One of you is rowing. The other is sitting on the back seat and talking to the dog.

2. Two other pupils, and two others, may now play the same happenings.[57] They should try to talk exactly as they would if they were really the boys in the picture. Those two boys probably talked all the time.

=Group Exercise.= The cla.s.s will tell what it likes in each playing of the picture, and what it thinks could be done better. The following questions will be useful in these talks:

1. Did the boys jump off their make-believe bicycles as if these were real? Did they lean them carefully against trees?

2. Did they talk together as if they were really on a day's picnic?

3. Did they get into the boat carefully? Did one of them row the make-believe boat as if it were a real boat? Did he look back now and then to see where he was going?

4. Which two boys played the picture best? Which two talked the best?

II

In the second picture the boys are seen on the water, well out from sh.o.r.e. They have just made an unpleasant discovery.

=Oral Exercise.= 1. Play that you are one of the boys in the boat and have suddenly discovered your dog in the water near by. Look as you think this boy looked. Say what you think he said to the dog. Say what he said to the boy rowing the boat.

2. Now, with a cla.s.smate, play this part of the story. Begin where you stopped in the first picture. You have left the dog on sh.o.r.e and are rowing out into the middle of the lake. What can you see out there? What do you say to each other? Think of the things that two boys out in a boat would talk about,--birds flying by, fish, the sky, the depth of the water, whether they could swim ash.o.r.e. Say these things. Then, right in the middle of your good time, the dog! After you have scolded him, you and your cla.s.smate talk together about what to do. What does each say, and what do you decide?

=Group Exercise.= Other pupils will now play this part of the story in their own way. Each two will try to show the others the best way. After each playing, the cla.s.s will talk about it. These questions will help the cla.s.s to see whether the playing was good or not:

1. Did the players talk enough? What more could each one have said?

2. Did they act and move as if they were sitting in a boat out on a lake or as if they were standing on dry land?

3. Did they lean over the edge of the boat and look for fish? Did they speak about how the sh.o.r.e looked from the middle of the lake?

Did they see other boats on the water?

=Oral Exercise.= How did the story end? Did the boys row on and let the dog swim after them until he got tired and returned to sh.o.r.e? Or did they take the wet animal into the boat and leave the bicycles to take care of themselves? What happened then? Were the bicycles still there when the boys returned from their boat ride? Tell your cla.s.smates how you think the story ended. If the ending is a good one, the teacher may ask you and other pupils to play it.

=Group Exercise.= The teacher will write some of the story endings on the board. Perhaps one or two pupils who have told good endings may write these on the board. Then the cla.s.s will try to make each one better.[58] The following questions will help in this cla.s.s work:

1. Does every sentence begin with a capital letter?

2. Does every sentence end with the right kind of mark?

3. Are there mistakes in any sentence?

4. Where can better words be used than those of the writer?

5. Where can a sentence or two be added to make the story better?

=Written Exercise.= Of all the story endings that have been corrected and rewritten on the board, the best one should now be copied. As you copy, notice the spelling of the hard words, the capitals, and the punctuation marks. Then, together with two or three cla.s.smates, correct your work and theirs.

=49. Correct Usage--_Went_, _Saw_, _Came_, _Did_=

An interesting game is sometimes played by pupils, which teaches them to use four words, _went_, _saw_, _came_, and _did_, correctly. Besides, it teaches them to have sharp eyes.

=Game.= Many things are placed on the teacher's desk. At a word all the pupils in the cla.s.s march past the desk and try to see everything on it as they pa.s.s. When they have returned to their seats, the teacher asks questions that the pupils answer. For example:

TEACHER (to first pupil): Tom, what did you do?

TOM: I _went_ to your desk, I _saw_ a pencil on it, and I _came_ to my seat. That is what I _did_.

TEACHER (to the next pupil): Mary, what did you do?

MARY: I _went_ to your desk, I _saw_ a knife on it, and I _came_ to my seat. That is what I _did_.

Each pupil must name an object on the desk that no other pupil has spoken of. One of these objects the teacher has marked on its under side. The pupil who names that object wins the game, if he has made no mistake in his language, and he may go to the desk and mark another object for the next game. In this second game only those may play who made no mistake in the first.

=50. Two Punctuation Marks=

You already know that every sentence must begin with a capital letter.

Besides, you have learned that some sentences end with a little mark (.) that is called a period, and some with a mark (?) that is called a question mark.

=Written Exercise.= In order to prepare for the game on the next page, copy the following sentences on the board.[59] Put capital letters where they belong. Place the right mark, a period or a question mark, at the end of each sentence.

1. what do you see on the side of the mountain

2. a large dog is standing in a snowdrift and barking

3. does he want to call us to him

4. these Saint Bernard dogs are very intelligent

5. they are beautiful dogs

6. what happened to the two boys who went boating on the lake

7. did they take the disobedient dog back to sh.o.r.e