WHEN WE WERE NORMAL
A Historical Augmented Reality Walking Tour
Getting the Kids to Read
LOCATION: BY THOMPSON 202 STAIRWELL ENTRANCE
Students at the elementary level often had no standardized textbooks or only a portion of one reader for two years worth of study. Some schools relied heavily on oral lessons from their teachers due to a lack of reading material. Principal John Thompson published The Thompson Readers in 1917 as one way to help remedy the problem.
The Thompson Readers included four volumes and were accompanied by two supplementary books: Word from Word Readers and New Century Readers each had their own importance and covered various aspects of what Thompson believed were crucial to early childhood education.
Word From Word Readers approached the structure of words and speech in a revolutionary way. While other schools believed in the classical approach of reciting the alphabet, Thompson had more faith in a student’s ability to comprehend the intricate elements of language.
The New Century Readers supplied students with new words in each chapter to enhance a student’s vocabulary. The sentences appeared in both a typed and script font to show the same words in multiple styles. The text broke down sentences into small bits and pictures accompanied the writing. This helped students slow down and examine each sentence more carefully.
The core series was the four volume Thompson Readers. Book One was designed for the first half of the first year of school and tackled phonetics and linguistics at their simplest form. The book opens with an examination of famous nursery rhymes and breaks down the basic elements of rhyme scheme and letter sounds. It was a point of pride for Thompson that he was able to use old and famous stories in order to help his students better understand both oral and written language.
Beyond providing literacy training, The Thompson Readers also instilled moral lessons. As an advocate for racial tolerance and equality, Thompson modified the popular "Three Little Pigs" story and several other popular fables in ways that would have been considered progressive for their time. In Thompson’s version of the Three Little Pigs, the white and black pigs find their undoing because of their attempts to go off on their own; however, the spotted pig is able to defeat the bad wolf.
Thompson also wrote teacher’s manuals to ease integration of his readers in the classroom. The Thompson Reader Manual gave suggestions on how to use the collection of readers but frequently reminded the teachers to use their own judgement in delivering lessons. The Word Building Book supplied prompts for what the teacher might write on the blackboard to help break down the structure of the English language so that children could more easily understand.
