Story Sentence Method

1900

Colonel Francis Parker and John Dewey believed that instruction should stem from their interests. In response to Parker's publications, story and sentence methods began to gain popularity. Sentence and story methods have the students discover their way through the text. During the story method, the teacher would tell a story and the children would memorize the story, usually through a rhyme or repetitive phrase. After the children had memorized the story, they would begin looking at the text. The sentence method differs from the story method in that the teacher would present a story one sentence at a time. The sentence would be written on the black board and then, as a class, they would explore and read the story sentence by sentence. In the following years, the story and sentence method began to receive criticism as testing revealed that many children were not holding onto skills necessary to successfully read.