passage aloud, the class listening. (b) He then reads it aloud by a few words at a time, the children reading after him simultaneously, and imitating his voice, inflexions, and pauses as exactly as possible. (c) The children then read it aloud simultaneously. He stops them, and corrects them, if any portion of the class are working badly; and sometimes makes one portion of the class, sometimes another, go on alone without the rest. (d) This process is repeated until time expires.

(2.) Ten minutes. He puts on the children individually in the passage which they have been reading simultaneously, and in other passages, taking care to make the worst readers go on oftenest, and calling attention to the merits of the best readers.

(3.) Five minutes. He questions rapidly on the matter and text of the lesson, making the children answer by hands, or by some other sign, and not allowing them to answer simultaneously.

Suppose then that, as suggested, the inspector listens for eight minutes to the first of the abovedescribed processes, then goes to see for twelve minutes the writing lesson of the second year pupilteacher, and then returns for ten minutes to hear part of the second and the whole of the third processes of the reading lesson, it is clear he will have been able to form a good notion of the sufficiency of the pupil-teacher in all parts of the work of giving his lesson.

Fourthly-Does he use provincialisms, or avoid them, and check the use of them in his Scholars? Fifthly-Does the lesson show any signs of having been prepared beforehand?-Many teachers will not think it worth while to prepare a reading

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lesson beforehand. They will take the trouble to prepare a geography or grammar lesson, but not a reading lesson. This is a mistake. Lessons in the elements, as well as lessons in the higher subjects, should be carefully prepared beforehand. For example, the teacher should not only have settled beforehand what lesson in the reading-book he will take with his class at the time appointed for the reading lesson, but should have selected the passage or passages in that lesson most adapted for simultaneous teaching, should have noted difficult words (that is, words liable to be mispronounced or misunderstood), and thought of the general nature of the remarks he will make on those words; and should have settled in his mind a line of questioning with which to conclude the lesson. Preparation of such an elementary lesson as a reading lesson is, of course, more necessary in the case of a young pupilteacher than of an experienced teacher, because he will probably himself be liable to commit many of the faults and fall into many of the mistakes which his class will make. Indeed it is difficult to see how an ordinary first year pupil-teacher can usefully give a reading lesson without such preparation.

22. Inspection of a Writing Lesson: Individual Instruction in Writing.-To the writing lesson as given by the second year pupil-teacher, the supposition is that twelve minutes or so are allowed by the inspector. Of course, an inspector might well enough occupy a longer time; but, well employed, this will be found sufficient. How, then, does he employ it? To what does he principally look?

First he looks to see whether the teacher has had his mind impressed with the difference between examining and teaching. The confusion is a very

common one in teachers' minds on all subjects of instruction, but there is no subject in respect of which it is more common than writing. I have seen writing lessons given by certificated teachers (who certainly ought to have learnt better at their training colleges) in which the teachers did nothing more than go round the class behind the backs of the scholars and find fault with each individual boy's work in turn, never showing them how to do better, still less making the errors, and the mode of correcting them, a matter of class instruction. The inspector will discover in two or three minutes whether the pupil-teacher has been so badly trained during his two years of apprenticeship that he does not know that he ought to teach every boy to write as well as to examine how he does write. He can in a very few minutes discover whether he knows what posture a scholar should adopt for writing, how he should sit to the desk, how he should hold the pen or pencil, and how place his book or slate. If he sees that the teacher is allowing a boy to work with a tiny piece of pencil as long as a thumb nail, or to sprawl over the desk with his left elbow across it, and his left ear resting on his arm, or to hold pen or pencil with the handle pointing away from him, or to raise his slate from the desk and hold it in his arm, he can very speedily put him down as either idle or untrained, and need not go further with the lesson. But if his first observation shows him that at least these grosser faults in the mechanical part of the lesson are avoided, he will then direct his attention to matters which require more thought and mental power.

One of the earliest questions, in regard to

instruction in writing, in which the judgment and discretion of a teacher are brought into play, is the question whether a child has progressed far enough in the use of the pencil to be fit to handle the pen. This is a question which, in a thoroughly welleducated country, would be settled in the infant school. If all children went to school regularly, and if all schools were good, every child would have begun the use of the pen, and would have got over the first difficulties which accompany the manipulation of ink before leaving the infant school. But as this cannot be the case, the inspector will, in a boys' school, have to look and see whether any boy is writing with a pen who has not been first well drilled in the use of the pencil. And in taking his notes on this point, he will be judging the principal teacher quite as much as the pupil-teacher.

One of the next questions on which the teacher's judgment is exercised in teaching writing is whether the scholar has advanced far enough in writing texthand to be fit to be instructed in small-hand. And another and most important matter for the inspector to note is whether all the copybooks in the school contain copies in large as well as in smallhand. There are some schools in which the older boys write nothing in their copybooks but smallhand. This is a great mistake. So long as it is useful for a boy to write in a copybook at all, it is important that he should write large as well as small hand. It is the large hand that gives the real grasp of the pen, makes the wrist and fingers supple, and enables the hand to follow with power and freedom the dictates of the brain and eye. If a boy's hand is formed, it is a waste of time to make him go on with a mere copybook: he should, for

his writing lesson, be provided with a transcriptionbook, and be set to write out extracts from standard authors, and other things that will be useful for him to refer to in after-life, when his school-days are over, and he has not the time or opportunity for going to a library. Or he should be set to compose letters and practise correspondence, to make précis and abstracts, and to practise other clerkly work which will connect his school training with the actual business of life, and increase his capacity as a wage-getter. But if his hand is not formed (and very few, in country schools, at any rate, are formed), he should have a copybook with three sizes of hands in it, and in which at least every third copy should be in large text-hand.

If the class which the pupil-teacher is taking is one which is to be presented in Standard I. or II. (New Code, 1876, see Appendix I.), the inspector will note carefully whether the instruction is directed to enabling the scholars to pass from copying and transcription into dictation. The proper way to instruct such a class is to go carefully through the alphabet; at each lesson forming a certain number of letters on the black board, and at the same time making the children note carefully how they are formed, shaped, or connected; then rubbing the copy out, and making them reproduce the letters, with the closest possible imitation of the style of their teacher, on their slates or copybooks, from dictation; then choosing a passage for transcription, which shall as much as possible reproduce the letters which have been the study of this and the preceding lesson; and, lastly, giving from dictation common words which illustrate the same or similar and analogous forms and combinations.