A typical day in a Gilded Age one room classroom.

Boys and girls enter the classroom single file, youngest to oldest.  Girls enter first, curtsying to the teacher.  Boys would bow.  Hang your coat on the hook.  Put your lunch pail on the shelf.  You sat according to academic ability, younger kids toward the front.

Say Pledge (which did not include “under God”), a prayer, and sing a song.  Teacher checks teeth and fingernails for cleanliness.

Reading – when called on you would “toe the mark” and read or recite a passage.

Privy (bathroom) break.

Arithmetic (ciphering) –  using slate boards and chalk

Penmanship – usually copying maxims

Lunch (“nooning”) – one hour including recess

Grammar/Spelling

History

Privy break

Morality – read and discuss a moral story;  might include elocution

Geography

http://www.heritageall.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Americas-One-Room-Schools-of-the-1890s.pdf

Sewing class in a 1900 classroom


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