PREFACE.

THE step from the fourth to the fifth book is an easy one. The cultivation of the imagination, and of the moral and religious nature of children through narrative and poetry of the highest class, yet simple in its sentiment and structure, continues to be the aim of this as of the preceding Standards. The more important economic and sanitary laws are also treated in a narrative form. The lessons are varied in subject-matter and in style, and occasionally difficult and easy lessons succeed each other, as in the earlier volumes. The introduction of an easy lesson after a more difficult one not only acts as an encouragement to the pupil, but gives time for revising and otherwise impressing the more difficult reading and dictation lessons which may precede it.

The spelling and dictation exercises are constructed in such a way as to insure, if thoroughly mastered, an accurate knowledge of all the more important words in the volume.

REQUIREMENTS UNDER STANDARD V. OF THE REVISED

CODE.

READING. A few lines of poetry from a reading-book used in the first class of the school. [In ninety per cent. of the schools—the Highest Class, the Fifth Standard and the Fifth Book will be found to coincide.]

WRITING.-A sentence slowly dictated once by a few words at a time from a reading-book used in the first class of the school.*

ARITHMETIC.—A sum in compound rules (common weights and measures).

* In nine schools out of ten, 'the reading-book used in the first class of the school' will probably be the Fifth Standard. If a higher class is reading Standard Six, the same class ought also to read Standard Five, and in this way the fifth class will be examined on the Fifth Standard which it is reading. In any case, the teacher will find that the surest way of meeting the requirements of the Code will be by thoroughly mastering the exercises in the Standard which the pupils are reading.