PLEASE HELP ITS 8:37 PM and it’s due in 4 hours William Holmes McGuffey and His Readers

The author of the McGuffey Readers, William Holmes McGuffey, was born September 23, 1800, near Claysville, Pennsylvania, and moved to Youngstown, Ohio, with his parents in 1802. McGuffey's family had emigrated to the United States from Scotland in 1774 and brought with them strong opinions and a belief in education.

McGuffey became a "roving" teacher at the age of 14, beginning with 48 students in a one-room school in Calcutta, Ohio. Early American elementary schools were often overcrowded. The size of the class was just one of several challenges faced by McGuffey. In many one-teacher schools, children's ages varied from 6 to 21. McGuffey often worked 11 hours a day, 6 days a week in a succession of frontier schools, primarily in Kentucky. Students brought their own books, most often their Bible, since few textbooks existed.

In 1835, the small Cincinnati publishing firm of Truman and Smith asked McGuffey to create a series of four graded readers for primary-level students. McGuffey was recommended for the job by Harriet Beecher Stowe, a longtime friend who was later to become famous for writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin. While McGuffey compiled the first four Readers (1836–1837 edition), the fifth and sixth were created by his brother Alexander during the 1840s. The series consisted of stories, poems, essays, and speeches. The advanced Readers contained excerpts from the works of great writers such as John Milton, Daniel Webster, and Lord Byron.

Even though there were originally four Readers, most schools of the nineteenth century used only the first two. The first Reader taught reading by using the phonics method—the identification of letters and their arrangement into words. The second Reader came into play once students could read and helped them to understand the meaning of sentences while providing vivid stories that children could remember. The third Reader taught the definitions of words, and was written at a level equivalent to the modern 5th or 6th grade. The fourth Reader was written for the highest levels of ability on the grammar school level, which students completed with this book.

The finished works represented far more than a group of textbooks; they helped frame the country's morals and tastes, and shaped the newly developing American character. The lessons in the Readers encouraged standards of morality and society throughout the United States for more than a century. McGuffey's Readers were among the first textbooks in the United States that were designed to become progressively more challenging with each volume. They used word repetition in the text as a learning tool, which built strong reading skills through challenging reading. Sounding-out, enunciation and accents were emphasized. Colonial-era texts had offered lists of 20 to 100 new words per page for memorization. In contrast, McGuffey used new vocabulary words in the context of real literature, gradually introducing new words and carefully repeating the old.

McGuffey believed that teachers, as well as their students, should study the lessons, and suggested they read aloud to their classes. He also listed questions after each story, for he believed that teachers must ask questions if they are to give adequate instruction. McGuffey desired to improve students' spelling, sharpen their vocabulary, and redevelop the lost art of public speaking. In the 19th century, elocution was a part of every public occasion, and McGuffey was responsible for creating a generation of gifted orators and readers.

WRITING PROMPT

Education was a high propriety for the new nation. During this time, teachers developed many innovative education practices that would be used in American schools for years to come.

Read about influential educator, William Holmes McGuffey. Based on the passage, what are three common educational practices that began with the use of McGuffey readers? How did they represent improvements in education?