The Get Wisdom! McGuffey's Eclectic Second eReader Classroom Lessons for Teachers

By Ronald Kirk

The Christian McGuffey's Readers of the 1830s continue to offer some of the best Biblically sound and effective reading instruction. The Get Wisdom! Literacy Program provides the complete phonics, spelling, reading, and grammar curriculum for the greatest success in literacy education. This program tested over decades never failed to teach young people to read well, as well as train the mind for any undertaking in life, regardless of native ability or previous educational experience. Even children, adolescents and adults suffering dyslexia learned successfully to read, without exception in our experience.
The first and Christian McGuffey's Readers came as a series of four books, taking the learner from early phonetic practice to post graduate level literacy upon mastering the Fourth Reader.
These Classroom Lessons for Teachers provide background insight and complete reading lessons to enable teachers of any experience and accomplishment successfully to teach children to read.
This offering of Lessons for the Second Reader builds upon the rigorous phonics and spelling training provided by the Get Wisdom! Literacy Curriculum, published separately.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ronald Kirk
• Release date: Sep 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005102302

Ronald Kirk

Replacing atheistic behavioral psychology with an updated historical Biblical educational philosophy, Ron Kirk developed and tested custom teacher training and curriculum and classroom teaching of the school subjects in every grade from kindergarten to adult. Ron carefully identified educational purpose, methods, and strategic content, with startling results regardless of native gifting or educational experience. Challenged young people overcome toward remarkable accomplishment. Children and adults with poor education experiences likewise overcome their challenges, even dyslexia. Ready students soared beyond ordinary expectations, often advancing several years over their peers.

Book preview

Preface to the Get Wisdom! Literacy Program

These lessons accompany and supplement the Christian McGuffey’s Readers of the 1830s. The McGuffey’s Readers have stood the test of time in training reading and thinking skills. The schools I founded and led for twenty-five years never failed to produce high quality readers, including dyslexic students, even dyslexic adults.

As a pioneer applied Biblical faith educator, I determined to rid Christian education of the false religion of behavioral psychology which operates on the premise that man is environmentally and materialistically determined over eons through evolution. Therefore, behaviorism necessarily assumes man cannot fundamentally change in his mind and soul—his psyche—or his character, but education can only manipulate behavior, as with animals. This mind-boggling premise is blasphemous as it completely contradicts the Gospel of Jesus Christ which makes a new creature in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). We found the guidance we needed in God’s Providential legacy in history and literature of Biblical thinking, education, life and action, based in the Biblical view of man, his purpose in God, and God’s universal and individual callings.

In order to effect the change from behaviorism so dominating the educational Christian literature, we found that we must create our own curriculum, often from scratch with assistance from the past. However, with McGuffey’s, though not perfect, we found a complete and serviceable system to take a child from basic phonetic reading in the First Reader, to—according to an advertisement by the Conservative Book Club in the 1980s—to a contemporary master’s degree level of literacy in the Fourth Reader.

For many years Mott Media has published these Christian McGuffey’s as the Original McGuffey’s Readers as print books to the blessing of many teachers and students. Mott is not interested in publishing their books as eReaders, but suggested I might publish them. I have. And now the Get Wisdom! McGuffey’s eReaders, these Lessons, and a phonics and spelling program provide the complete content and literacy curriculum. This curriculum will serve both the frantic home-school mom needing detailed day to day help, but also the intrepid teacher seeking to make the deep-dive toward becoming a master Christian education teacher.

The four-book Get Wisdom! McGuffey’s eReader set may be found on Amazon Kindle, and in ePub and PDF formats at GetWisdom.us. Likewise, we are making available a complete phonics, spelling and grammar literacy curriculum. Lastly, we are in the process of publishing a complete package of applied Biblical worldview, and school and classroom teacher training. Other classroom subjects will follow soon—math, science, history, literature, and music.

Introductory Note

To bring children to understand words and stories by their own effort is the goal of learning to read. This is not a trivial task, and the teacher must work to bring complete thoughts to the young child. The more basic, the more difficult to define.

We adults, who take thoughts such as being for granted, are often at a loss to explain things in terms children understand. If possible, teach vocabulary words in terms the student already knows. To do this, the teacher must learn their working vocabularies, and build from there. As the McGuffey’s Reader itself says, the best means toward understanding is discussion.

Stories are typically about one idea—known as a premise. Just so, stories may contain details that help complete the story, yet do not comprise its main idea. Teachers should guide children, little by little over time, toward understanding what a story or theme is mostly about. This again is not a trivial ability for a child. Time and effort are the key to success.

Leading ideas or themes are even more difficult. They are the thoughts between the lines. That is, stories usually do not specify the theme, but the reader may yet understand it. Interestingly, an author may not even realize his own theme, but because it lies in his thoughts, his theme comes out as he expresses himself. The Bible calls recognizing a theme discernment (Proverbs 2; 1 Corinthians 12:10; Hebrews 5:14). Discernment is one of the key abilities and gifts from God, where good and evil are in constant battle. Christians must learn to distinguish deceptive themes from true and godly ones. If not, we will constantly suffer the resulting evil, rather than overcoming evil with good as we ought.

McGuffey gave a list of words for each lesson. Intended these as spelling lessons. Since we have adopted a system of spelling instruction based in Romalda Spalding’s phonics system, in our eBook version and prefer our system, we here call these vocabulary lists.

Vocabulary words are tricky. The teacher should understand that all knowledge is by analogy—comparing and contrasting one thing with another. This means that all word definitions are circular. One definition is in terms of another. Somehow even the mind of a child, thanks to God’s gifts of abstraction and imagination, can handle the vagaries of language. They can quickly gain understanding and ability with words. But the process requires patience, and a teacher increasingly capable of explaining the same thing in many different ways. Definitions given here intend to provide meaning in terms of the story, and not all possible meanings.

Understanding of a word may come from the context in a sentence or story, how the word in question relates to words around it.

To determine what a student knows or does not know, in order to best give help, it is always well to ask what he thinks a word means. The simplest way to determine a student’s understanding of a word is to ask them for a sentence using the word. Explaining a word with other words also provides a good way to test a student’s understanding of a word. If he is close, teacher encourages his understanding, and uses it as a ground for improved understanding.

Therefore, the teacher should not necessarily require mastery of vocabulary terms at this point. The important task is understanding of the reading content, not necessarily minute mastery of all elements, which again takes time. Informal discussion well serves here. For students ready and able, have him record some or all vocabulary words with their simple meanings, as the teacher decides. The determining principle here is balance of time for the present task against overall reading progress. Don’t get bogged down. Solomon says hope deferred makes the heart sick (Proverbs 13:12). Balance the encouragement of moving ahead with the goal of mastery, remembering maturity of ability takes time and practice. Concentrate on words students do not know.

Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language contains the best literate Biblical, historic, philosophical, and practical definitions. Vocabulary definitions here generally comport with Webster’s. Webster’s 1828 Dictionary is available from Foundation for American Christian Education as a facsimile print book of the original, and in digital form as a Logos format book at FACE.net. Webster’s 1828 is also available at no cost on the internet.

One final introductory thought. While McGuffey held to a Biblical view of life and its Gospel, given the rigors of the time and the influence of the moralistic but largely secular Victorian Era, the book emphases good conduct and seeks to dissuade bad conduct. The Bible agrees with the notion of early and thorough training (Proverbs 22:6). This is good, but insufficient by itself. Merely moralizing through revulsion or fear, or having a sense of superiority because we’re good is decidedly not Biblical a view. The Bible rather also and by priority emphasizes relationship with God through Christ, with the resulting ability to walk worthy by the power of the Holy Spirit. Both faith and conduct are important. Education into both are central. I therefore strongly suggest tempering McGuffey’s lessons with grace, faith, and Christ’s power in us to live well before Him.

Conclusion

Note that for whatever reason, the original Readers included words in their vocabulary lists not in the story. We have removed these.

Regarding the questions with each lesson, we agree with Mr. McGuffey that they should evoke discussion more than demand particular answers. For that reason, we will not answer the questions as part of these lessons, except where they evoke thought arising from the peculiar point of view the Get Wisdom! program represents.

One important, final introductory thought. While McGuffey held to a Biblical view of life and its Gospel, given the rigors of the time and the influence of the moralistic but largely secular Victorian Era, the book emphasizes good conduct and seeks to dissuade bad conduct. The Bible agrees with the notion of early and thorough training (Proverbs 22:6). This is good, but insufficient by itself. Merely moralizing through revulsion or fear, or having a sense of superiority because we’re good is decidedly not Biblical a view. The Bible rather also and by priority emphasizes relationship with God through Christ, with the resulting ability to walk worthy by the power of the Holy Spirit. Both faith and conduct are important. Education into both are central. I therefore strongly suggest tempering and balancing McGuffey’s lessons with grace, faith, and Christ’s power in us to live well before Him.

Lesson I—The Little Readers

Story

Children can learn to read, which animals cannot.

Leading Idea/Theme

Reading is a gift from God, and therefore a responsibility to learn it well.

Vocabulary

what—which part or thing. What is a substitute pointing to something else. What is your name?

thing—any object or happening.

while—here, a name (noun), a space of time.

know—receive or get in the mind. Understand.

cannot—not able to.

lessons—things to learn; the content of instruction.

Puss—the name of the cat in the story, and also once an ordinary word for cat.

play—any activity just for pleasure (good feeling).

trees—plural of tree. Woody plants with trunks, limbs, and leaves.

mice—plural of mouse; small animals of the rodent family. Rodents have front teeth always growing because they wear down. Rodents include mice, rats, hamsters, and squirrels.

which—here, a word connecting what came before with what comes after.

better—more or greater good qualities compared to another.

reason—explanation for the cause of anything. Why. Also, the ability, a gift of God in the mind that allows men to understand how things work together.

reader—here, a book used to learn to read.

point—here, aim at or direct toward, using a finger or object, to show the way.

words—plural of word. Meaningful voiced sounds or their written form—such as the names of things, names of actions, and other uses.

learn—get knowledge or ability.

strive—work or labor hard to accomplish something.

could—past of can. Was able. With enough strength or skill.

faster—moving more quickly.

never—not at any time.

only—by itself; at least, just.

spell—form a word from its sounds or letters.

catch—take hold of or control.

well—here, with good skill.

climb—go up by hands or feet.

because—for the reason that. Caused by. Resulting from.

little—small in size. Not large.

getting—receiving, gaining, or acquiring.

Lesson II—Time to Get Up

Story

On a new morning, someone, likely a parent, reminds James of his responsibilities before God.

Leading Idea/Theme

For our own wellbeing, we must often, every morning, remind ourselves of God’s goodness toward us, and to stir ourselves up to our responsibilities (e.g., rising to work in the morning) as due thanks.

Vocabulary

kinder—more ready to do good to others.

morning—the first part of the day, usually meaning after sunrise. However, morning starts on the clock at midnight while still dark.

dwells—lives, as in one’s home.

warmth—the feeling of energy, as from sunlight, on our bodies. Like light and dark, cold is the absence of warming energy. We usually consider energy called warm as comfortable and helpful. Warmth can also be measured as temperature.

father—the male parent of a child.

blessing—that which makes happy.

heaven—sky, outer space, and here, the dwelling place of God, the angels, and believers who have died.

tender—here, loving and compassionate, or having soft kindness toward.

friends—people attached to one another by affection. Desired and good company.

shines—gives out light

down—toward the ground. Low.

world—the earth. The heavenly body upon which we live.

health—the good condition of the mind or body.

mercies—plural of mercy. Multiplied goodness to one who doesn’t deserve it.

glorious—from the word glory. Of great brightness. This is an important Biblical Word. Light helps us see well. The glory of God enables us to see Him as He is.

pleasant—pleasing, agreeable. Grateful to the mind or senses. Pleasant things make us glad.

risen—up from lower place.

thanks—from the heart, telling someone that he has done