In regard to the subject matter of spelling, Mr. Cotton believes that here, as in other subjects, the dominant community interest should be taken into consideration. Each community, Mr. Cotton points out, has its own vocabulary. The assignment in spelling, he says, should be worked out as carefully as the assignment in any other subject, and, as in every other subject, the home life should dictate the point of departure.
The assignment may from day to day, Mr. Cotton suggests, consist of lists of ten or twenty words covering the entire range of life in the community. The teacher may ask the class to hand in a list of ten words that are names of kitchen utensils. If there are five or six in the class, it may be that twenty or more different words will be named. Such a device furnishes the fairest test of the child’s ability to spell these words, because he suggests them to himself and is not aided by having them pronounced. The teacher should correct the lists and hand them back, and then the twenty different words should be used as a spelling lesson and made the basis of a permanent list. Similar lists may cover other home departments, industrial departments, or farm life, and there may be lists covering the vocabulary of the social, the civil or governmental, the religious and the school life of the community.
The assignment may take another form, Mr. Cotton suggests, and accomplish the same purpose. The teacher may have it in mind to teach inductively the meaning of the word synonym. He gives the following list of words: farmer, grower, cultivator, agriculturist and husbandman. He then has the pupils pronounce each word, tell the meaning, use one of the words in a sentence and substitute as many words as possible for it. Other groups of farm words may be used in the same way.
While Mr. Cotton concedes that the teacher must select, in the main, his own devices for teaching any subject, he offers the following suggestions for teaching spelling:
“The words to be taught should be the words needed in the school vocabulary and in life.
“The work should be based as much as possible upon the laws governing spelling, and should be done inductively.
“Constant drill is essential, and absolute accuracy in all written work must be insisted upon.