SECOND BOOK.

READING SPELLER.

A NEW METHOD

OF

TEACHING SPELLING.

BY

WILLIAM A. CAMPBELL,

PRINCIPAL OF HIGH SCHOOL, HOBOKEN, N. J.

THOMAS KELLY, Publisher,

NEW YORK.

ت

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY
GIFT OF THE

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

PREFACE.

THE Old method of teaching spelling from columns of words is no longer satisfactory. Experience has proven that to require children to study lists of words, at whose meaning they must guess, and in the use of which they acquire no skill, is unnatural, laborious, and wasteful of time. So strong has been the reaction from the old-time books and methods that many earnest teachers have banished the spellingbook from the school. We should, however, have a spelling-book based upon the laws of mental growth, -one that will present words in telling connection with one another.

In studying detached words, selected according to some artificial arrangement, as the number of syllables, one only gains pictures of empty forms; but the spelling exercise can be made more profitable. The author of the "Reading Speller" has endeav"ored to present, in a form both attractive and instructive, those words which our pupils meet in their studies. He has not sacrificed its usefulness to any grading upon syllables or sounds; he has rather graded it upon subjects familiar to pupils. It has been his aim to condense the description of objects of interest, retaining the thought, fact, and language peculiar to them. Some of the matter has been selected from many different sources, carefully com