Making Reading An Effective Instrument of Learning in the Content Fields

Burton William H. The Guidance of Learning Activities. New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., Inc., 1944.

Contains valuable suggestions for the teacher in planning, selecting, and guiding activities for effective learning.

Gates Arthur I. , Jersild Arthur T. , McConnell T. R. , and Challman Robert C. Educational Psychology. New York: Macmillan Co., 1942.

Chapter xiii, “The Development of Meanings,” contains a discussion of the relationship between experience and meaning and of sound techniques and aids for developing meaning.

Gray William S. (Editor). Improving Reading in Content Fields. Supplementary Educational Monograph No. 62. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947.

See especially Parts V, VII, and VIII for articles relating to basic problems in reading at the secondary level.

Horn Ernest . Methods of Instruction in the Social Studies. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937.

Chapters ix and x contain specific suggestions for the enrichment of experience, and chapter xii, suggestions for organization and retention.

Supplementary Instructional Aids

Dale Edgar . Audio-Visual Methods in Teaching. New York: Dryden Press, 1946.

A highly readable and comprehensive treatment of the use of all types of instructional aids to learning. Chapter iv contains an illuminating discussion of the various levels of experience.

Dent E. C. The Audio-Visual Handbook. Chicago: Society for Visual Education, Inc. (100 E. Ontario St.), 1946 (fifth edition). A concise guide to the use of audio-visual aids.

Hoban Charles F. , Hoban Charles F. Jr. , and Zisman Samuel . Visualizing the Curriculum. New York: Dryden Press, 1937.

See especially chapter i which contains an able discussion of the positive values of audio-visual aids in relation to the learning process.

McKown Henry C. , and Roberts A. B. Audio-Visual Aids to Instruction. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1940.

A standard and well-documented reference to the use of audio-visual aids.

Multi-Sensory Aids in the Teaching of Mathematics. Eighteenth Yearbook of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1945.

An excellent comprehensive study by a national committee of the use of instructional aids in a special field.

Resource Units for Teachers

Note: The majority of resource units are available only as unpublished or fugitive materials. The published resource units cited below serve merely to illustrate the possibilities of the resource-unit technique for gathering and organizing all types of materials for effective learning.

Living in the Atomic Age. Educational Research Circular No. 57. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Bulletin, Vol. XLIV, No. 23, December 3, 1946.

An excellent example of a resource unit upon a most timely subject.

Arrangements may be made to reproduce this circular for nonprofit purposes.

Problems in American Life, Units 1–22. Edited by Jacobson Paul B. Washington: National Association of Secondary-School Principals and the National Council for the Social Studies, 1942–45.

This series of resource units effectively illustrates the pattern and scope of the resource unit in the social studies area.

Quillen I. James Using a Resource Unit. Washington: National Association of Secondary-School Principals and the National Council for the Social Studies, 1942.

A valuable guide for teachers in planning, building, and using a resource unit.

Formulas for Predicting the Reading Difficulty of Materials

Flesch R. The Art of Plain Talk. New York: Harper & Bros., 1946.

Chapter vii and the appendix contain a description of the Flesch formula and illustrate its use. This formula is based upon an analysis of sentence length, word complexity or abstractness as measured by the number of prefixes and suffixes, and the number of personal references in samples of one hundred words of reading material.

Lorge Irving . “Predicting Readability.” Teachers College Record, VL (March, 1944), 408–13.

The Lorge formula is based upon an analysis of sentence length, the ratio of prepositional phrases to sentence length, and the ratio of hard words to sentence length in samples of one hundred words of reading material.