Page 45

   TRAINING OF TEACHERS FOR THE COUNTRY SCHOOLIO 46
teaching of little children, in order to get a proper conception of the
difficulties Involved in teaching a class of beginners.
  This teaching of the youngest children wull never -help to establish
  ight Ideas In Wisconsin until we have given up our sub-primarles.'
  (5) Minimum Amount of Practice. The consensus of opinion seems
to be in favor of an equivalent of at least twenty minutes a day, or
one hundred minutes a week, for twenty weeks as the minimum length
of time to be devoted to practice work.
  (6) Limitations to the Number of Classes. If the training teacher
is to find time to look after the practice work as closely as it needs
looking after, no more than three practice classes are desirable at the
same period, and these should be in the same building, so that the
training teacher can easily supervise the three closely. In a school
with a model department teacher assisting, as cited above, It is pos-
sible to look after four classes.
  (7) Small Sections at First. Many city grade buildings in use for
practice were built long before their possibilities along practice lines
needed consideration. There are no vacant rooms in which small
sections of pupils can be taken. 'The halls are cold. The path of least
resistance is chosen and the student of sixteen or seventeen is placed
in charge of a room full of children-one section of which studies at
their seats and the other group forms her class. This is a grave mis-
take. Whatever the obstacles, the custom of young girls starting prac-
tice work with twenty or more children in a class should no longer
be tolerated.
  In some way provision should be made for taking small sections of
classes either into comfortable halls or Into rooms temporarily vacated.
During the-first ten weeks at least, the question of disciplining a room
at
the same time a practice teacher handles a class. should not enter. In
a few towns the difficulty has been avoided by using large homeemade
screens and so placing them as to make possible the holding of two or
more sections in the same room. occasionally It may be possible to have
lecess at different times in different grades or the kjndergarten or the
do-
mestic science rooms may be used at certain hours.
  (8) Lesson Plans. The kind of lesson plans required by the super-
visor is a measure of the estimate she places upon the educational
value of plans. The students. in their work in pedagogy should study
in detail the essentials of a good plan. (See books by Earhart and Me-
Murry above.)
  The practice of having the plans read and corrected by city grade teach-
c ra has occasionally obtained a foothold. A duplicate of the plan may
profitably be given by the practice teacher to the grade teacher of the
room where she is at work, but the responsibility of reading, correcting.
and revising plans, rests with the training teacher. She In paid for It and
she Is presumably capable of doing It welL
  (9) Helpful Conatructive Criticism. Helpful constructive criticisms
by the supervisor are indispensable if practice teaching is to show im-
  *See Suggestive Studiey or School Conditicas, pp. 63-66: 8uggestio or.
the Teaching of Reading, pp. 6. 7. S, both Issued by the State Departmept
oft Education.