tempestas

salvete!

I recently had the opportunity to read Zaretta Hammond's book Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain. (Here's a link to some of her resources.) In her Ready for Rigor framework, she talks about classroom rituals and routines that can prime students for learning and create positive classroom culture. I was thinking about my own classes and how I don't really have set classroom routines. I usually have students complete a "Do Now" activity that is written on the board, but it usually involves short, independent practice over something we've been working on in class. It's not much of a ritual, and it doesn't do much beyond review the previous day's lesson.

I've read about some daily and weekly rituals that other Latin teachers do, and I was recently especially impressed with Miriam Patrick's post about hers. Her post about the weather was especially appealing to me. At my new school, I don't have my own classroom, so it would be very helpful if my daily ritual was a low- or no-prep/prop activity. The weather, obviously, is always available and more or less accessible to the eye in every room (there are four!) where I teach. I like, also, that the grammar for discussing the weather can be simple enough for my 6th grade IA students or complex enough for my Latin II's without me needing to modify the materials.

So, I developed this handout with a list of common weather vocabulary. It's adapted from the chapter about weather in Traupman. I first introduced a shorter list of new words with this slideshow of images and captions. I plan to begin each class day with a discussion of today's weather here in Austin until students are comfortable with the routine and then add discussions of other places via images. Eventually, I'm going to have students write captions for these 14 images in Latin in pairs as a class activity.

I already do a lot of Picture Talk activities in my classes, so adding weather vocabulary to my students' bank of words should be great. I'm also hoping that it will structure the beginning of class (perhaps after that daily Do Now activity) as a time of speaking and hearing Latin.

What do you do as a ritual or routine in your classroom? Have you tried a daily or weekly discussion of the weather? How'd it go?

- Ashley Schneider