facial expression, a good command of
English words, power of graphic description and narration, restraint
from digression and superfluous detail, and concentration of aim upon
some definite point.

In teaching poetry to primary classes, the main object is to lead the
pupils to feel the music and realize the imagery. To attain this end,
the best beginning is made by a sympathetic and expressive rendering of
the passage by the teacher. It can be recited many times incidentally,
while he is asking the pupils to look at the pretty pictures suggested
by the text. It is not necessary to enter at any length into an analysis
of the poem, unless the pictures are arranged in an easy order, such as
spring, summer, autumn, winter.

MEMORIZATION

One of the most valuable means of securing an appreciation of literature
is the memorization of fine passages of prose and poetry. Pupils from
the primary grades upward should be required to memorize systematically
several lines of prose and poetry every week of the school year. During
childhood the mind is at its most impressionable stage, and what is
committed to memory is then retained longer and more accurately than
what is memorized at any later period. The passages should be carefully
selected and should be suited to the capacity and interests of the
pupils. Nothing should be memorized that has not _some_ meaning for
them, but it would be impossible to require that every selection should
be _fully_ understood. The selections which children commit to memory in
the most plastic period of their lives will often reveal a new and
unexpected meaning and beauty in later years and will be a source of
keen delight and satisfaction. The passages memorized will form a
standard, unconscious it may be, by which to test the excellence of
other selections.

It is of the greatest importance that the passages chosen should have
artistic excellence in thought, feeling, music, imagery, and language.
Moreover, these qualities must be present in such a form that they will,
when properly presented by the teacher's reading or reciting, appeal, in
some considerable measure, to the pupils' capacities and interests.
Since there are so many noble passages in English literature, nothing of
doubtful value should be memorized.

It is also very important that the teacher himself should have committed
to memory and be able to recite freely and expressively every selection
he requires his pupils to memorize.