Excerpt from The Horace Mann Readers: Introductory Second Reader This Introductory Second Reader has been prepared in response to an urgent demand. Teachers using the Horace Mann Readers and the Daily Lesson Plans, the Teachers; Manual of the Series, have found that their pupils have made such rapid progress as to exhaust the material supplied by the Primer, the First Reader, and the Second Reader long before the end of the second year. They have therefore insistently requested the authors to prepare an additional reader which Should be, in point of vocabulary and phonic system, an integral part of the Horace Mann Series and suitable for use between the First and Second Readers. The present book, it is believed, satisfies these requirements and furnishes interesting and valuable material for reading les sons, word studies, and phonic drills. Teachers using this book are urged to make regular use of the phonic exercises, word problems, and drills, which are given, lesson by lesson, at the end of the book. For it cannot be too strongly emphasized that the highest success in teaching beginners to read depends, not merely upon the use of an abundance of well-graded, permanently interesting reading matter, but also on the wise and skillful use of phonics, the master key to inde pendent reading. Experience has demonstrated the soundness and the efficiency of the Horace Mann method of teaching reading. It has been proved that while methods depending chiefly upon mechanical repetition produce little result with great labor, the Horace Mann method, depending upon the intelligent mastery of oper ative processes, achieves great results with comparatively little labor. For an exposition of the theory underlying the Horace Mann method, together with practical suggestions for handling every phase of the reading lesson, teachers are referred to Daily Lesson Plans, the Teachers' Manual of the Series. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.