Circling with Pets

"Circling with Pets" is quite a strange title for an activity if you aren't already familiar with the Circling with Balls activity. Our school has a culture that already emphasizes athletics in many areas of school life, so I chose to focus this lesson around students' home lives instead. (Also, I personally am obsessed with my own pets and don't "play" a sport, so this activity was much easier for me to model authentically.) This lesson was designed for the first two days of our 6th grade language carousel, a 4-week sample course before students make their language choices for middle school.

I passed out a blank piece of paper and gave them these instructions on the board.

Side 1:  Draw a pet you have or want to have. quod animal habes, vel habere vis?
Side 2:  Draw your family. qui sunt in familia tua?

I modeled this with a drawing of my own pets.

Once they're finished, I went around the room asking questions about students' animals. I wrote

habes/habeo and vis habere/volo habere on the board and their English meanings. My students already learned the words for mother, father, sister, and brother in Latin last year, and I circled with those as well. I also wrote MAGNUS and parvus on the board in Latin in different sizes to show their meanings and asked questions about whether their pets and siblings were big or small.

At the end of class, students turned in their drawings to me and I created a slide for each student that described their family, the pet they have or want to have, and said whether they were a boy or girl. 

Here are some examples:

ego sum puer. canem, nomine Lucy, habeo. in familia mea, sunt mater, pater, et frater, nomine Nicholai. quis sum?

fratrem, qui semper Pokemon Go ludit, habeo. mater et pater sunt quoque in familia mea. canem parvum, nomine Sam, habeo. sum puella. quis sum?

ligrem habere volo. unam sororem et tres fratres habeo. unus frater est infans. sum puer. quis sum?

(Yes, this kid wants a liger.)

In class the next day, we did choral translations of these slides and guessed who each person was. The students were able to hear many repetitions of our target vocabulary (family words, habeo, and sum/est) and get their moment of fame.