CLASSROOM SERVICE

COURSE OF STUDY

Emma Meistrik
Supervisor of Elementary Education, Pierre

Suggestive Questions

There is a difference of opinion among educa-
tors regarding the value of examinations and no
doubt there is truth on both sides of any argument
relative to this question. It is the aim of modern
education to make the school environment as
much as possible like the life situations which the
pupil will meet both now and in the future. Ex-
aminations are still an important part of our life
set-up. They are still given to teachers, lawyers
and all classes of civil service workers. If this be
true, how shall teachers prepare our boys and girls
in their school work so that they will be able to
adapt themselves to conditions as they will con-
front them?

In many cases, emotional attitudes of fear have
been built up in our testing program and this fear
makes the test unpopular regardless of its con-
tent. Some pupils are dominated by this fear even
before they see the questions. Too much stress
is placed upon the examinations in the promotion
of pupils.

Pupils should be taught to evaluate their work
by a testing program of their own but they must
have some general standards by which they may
make these evaluations. It seems that we talk
too much about “facts” as something we should
avoid, as if we could get along without them.

Facts are the elements out of which thoughts
are built into judgments and upon judgments de-
pend our actions. It is not that we should avoid
learning facts, but that we should learn them as
tools in the solving of problems. Memory is quite
necessary, too, in utilizing these facts. We must
remember them, not as isolated elements, but in
their relation to other facts, if we are to solve our
problems. For example, here are two ways of
asking a question involving practically the same
facts. Which is the better question?

1. Name the important rivers in South Da-
kota.

2. Where might we develop electrical power in
the rivers of South Dakota? Could we intelligent-
ly answer question 2 without knowing the facts
involved in question 1?

The following questions may aid teachers in
checking the work done in art. They do not in-
clude all that pupils have learned but represent
some of the results we may well expect of 7th and
8th graders at the end of the course.

SDEA JOURNAL e November, 1935

Art— Seventh and Eighth Grades

1. When do we use the warm colors? the cool
colors?

2. Draw-a picture of a sunset. What colors are
used?

3. Draw a picture of a winter scene. What colors
are used?

4. Draw a plan of a good schoolroom.

5. Arrange the furniture in a dining room.

6. Arrange the furniture in a living room.

7.Plan the walls, draperies, floor coverings and
furniture of a living room.

8. Draw a landscape suitable for a living room.

9. Describe a picture you have studied.

10. Name and describe five types of period fur-
niture. Which do you like best?

11. Plan a flower garden.

12. Discuss one of the following pictures, ob-
serving line direction, color, light-dark arrange-
ment and proportion: The Last Supper, Da-
Vinci; Whistler’s Mother; DaVinci’s Mona

*Lisa, or some other favorite picture.

13. Name types of material used for draperies.

14. How shall pictures be framed?

15. Give rules for hanging pictures.

16. How should color and design in draperies be
chosen?

17. How would you choose rugs, if you were fur-
nishing a home?

18. In tinting the walls, what colors shall you use
if you wish to make the room appear larger?
more cheerful? What is the effect of large
patterns in wall covering?

19.Do you understand what is meant by per-
spective line, primary and secondary colors, de-
sign, proportion?

20. What shape should the rug have that is to
be placed in a long narrow room?

21. How would you test the wall in a north
room. Why?

22. What sort of curtains would you use if the
rug contained a figured pattern? If the rug
were plain colored?

23. If there is figured paper on the walls, what
kind of rug would you use?

24. Draw a rug design.

25. Draw a design for curtains.

26. Draw a design for linoleum to be used in the
bathroom.

27. Arrange the kitchen.

28. Furnish a bathroom.

29. Draw a snow scene suitable for a living room;
a summer scene.

30. Draw a study in fruits or flowers.

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