English work centered in much the same way around the building of the bungalow and the life of its inhabitants. The spelling lessons came from the words they were using in connection with the building, etc. The plans for the completed bungalow, a description of the house and the furnishings, or the life of the family that dwelt in it, furnished inexhaustible material for compositions and writing lessons. Criticism of these compositions as they were read aloud to the class by their authors became work in rhetoric; even the grammar work became more interesting because the sentences were about the farm.
Art lessons were also drawn from the work the children were actually doing in building and furnishing the house. The pupils were very anxious that their house should be beautiful, so the color scheme for both the inside and outside furnished a number of problems in coloring and arrangement. Later they found large opportunities for design, in making wallpaper for the house, choosing and then decorating curtains and upholstery. Each pupil made his own design, and then the whole class decided which one they wanted to use. The pupils also designed and made clay tiles for the bathroom floor and wall, and planned and laid out a flower garden. The girls designed and made clothes for the doll inmates of the house. The whole class enjoyed their drawing lessons immensely because they drew each other posing as different members of the family in their different occupations on the farm. The work of this grade in expression consisted principally in dramatizations of the life on the farm which the children worked out for themselves. Not only were the children “learning by doing” in the sense that nearly all the school work centered around activities which had intrinsic meaning and value to the pupils, but most of the initiative for the work came from the children themselves. They made their own number problems; suggested the next step in the work on the house; criticised each other’s compositions, and worked out their own dramatizations.
In almost all the grades in the school the pupils were conducting the recitations themselves whenever there was an opportunity. One pupil took charge of the class, calling on the others to recite; the teacher becoming a mere observer unless her interference was necessary to correct an error or keep the lesson to the point. When the class is not actually in charge of a pupil, every method is used to have the children do all the work, not to keep all the responsibility and initiative in the hands of the teacher. The pupils are encouraged to ask each other questions, to make their objections and corrections aloud, and to think out for themselves each problem as it comes up. This is not done by giving a class a set lesson in a text-book as an introduction to a new problem, but by suggesting the problem to the class and by means of questions and discussion, helped out whenever possible by actual experiments by the pupils, trying to bring out the solution of the problem, or at the least to give the pupil an understanding of what the problem is about before he sees it in print.