washing and drying dishes, of making a springboard, of hanging a picture, of sharpening a knife? Explain to your classmates what you can make or do.2 Have an outline in mind in order that you may speak clearly and to the point. Perhaps the following list will suggest a good subject:

1. How to Find the North Star

2. How to Pitch a Tent

3. How to Handle and Take Care of a Rifle

4. How to Paddle a Canoe

5. How to Swim

6. How to Learn to Swim

7. How to Get a Book at the Public Library

8. How to Make Griddlecakes

9. How to Make Lemonade

10. How to Care for a Cow

11. How to Hang a Barn Door

12. How to Wash Windows

13. How to Hang a Screen Door

14. How to Prove Addition

15. How to Make a Raft

16. How to Make a Cheese Sandwich

17. How to Make a Twine Holder

18. How to Play Checkers

19. How a Snowplow Works

20. How to Lay Shingles
21. How to Darn Stockings

22. How a Street is Paved

Group Exercise. After each explanation the class should call attention to the mistakes in English that the speaker made. Whenever a pupil makes a mistake it shows that he needs to learn more about the correct use of words. He needs to study grammar. Grammar tells why some expressions are correct and

others incorrect.

3. Writing Compositions

Written Exercise. Choose another subject and write what you wish to tell your classmates about it. Your teacher will give you no help at this time, for the exercise is to show what you remember about the best way of putting your thoughts on paper. Keep this and all your compositions; you will have further use for them.3

Group Exercise. When all the compositions have been written, let three or four pupils copy theirs on the board. The class will criticize these with the following questions in mind: 4

1. Do the important words in the title of the composition begin with capital letters ?

2. Is the composition properly divided into paragraphs? Is the beginning of each paragraph correctly indicated?

3. Does every sentence in the composition begin with a capital letter and end with the proper punctuation mark?

4. Does the composition show by its mistakes that the writer needs to learn more about writing paragraphs, about writing sentences, and about grammar?

CHAPTER ONE5

THE SENTENCE

1. What a Sentence Is

1. The black horse belongs to my father.
2. The black horse spent the day in the pasture.
3. The black horse galloped down the road.

Oral Exercise. 1. Each of the groups of words above expresses a thought about the black horse. Have you a thought about the black horse? What is it?

2. Express your thought about each of the following. If you can, express more than one thought about each.

When we speak or write we use words not singly but in groups, each of which expresses a complete thought. Thus we say:

The storm on the lake continued all night.
The storm on the lake destroyed a fine ship.
The storm on the lake kept us in the house.

It would be very different if we should say merely :

The storm on the lake.

This group of words needs to have something added to it to help it express a complete thought.

The same would be true if we should speak the words:

Is reading.

If we said no more, no one would understand us. Is reading seems, and is, unfinished. Not so if we say:

The boy is reading.

The old gentleman is reading the newspaper.

The girl is reading a story.

It is plain that none of these three groups of words needs to have anything added to it; each, just as it stands, expresses a complete thought. Such complete groups are called sentences.

A sentence is a group of words expressing a complete thought.

Oral Exercise. Read the following passage carefully and tell how many sentences it contains. With what kind of letter does each sentence begin? With what kind of mark does each sentence end?

It was glorious in the country. Cornfields were waving. Oats were green. Hay stood in great stacks in the meadows. On a sunny slope stood a pleasant old farmhouse. Near it flowed a little stream of water. Should you have liked to be there? Go with me to the country next

summer.

Group Exercise. Let pupils write sentences on the board. The class will criticize these sentences. Is each a sentence? If not, what must be added to it to make it a sentence? Does each begin with a capital letter? Does each end with the proper punctuation mark?

Oral Exercise. 1. Some of the following groups of words are sentences; some are not. Decide whether each group is a

sentence or not.

2. Add words to the groups above that are not complete, so as to make sentences of them.

Group Exercise. With the class watching for errors, let pupils write on the board sentences containing the words in the list which follows, two sentences for each word. Thus:

Newspaper. To-day's newspaper tells of another battle.
What does to-day's newspaper say?

Oral Exercise. Are all four of these groups of words sentences? What does the first sentence do- tell something or