the most interesting of the lessons? Some teachers say it can, How
will you go at it to make it so?

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 le