Monumenta Funerum

Each year in Latin 3 at the end of October and beginning of November, we do a unit on Roman funerary monuments.  Although it's a bit morbid, the students seem to enjoy thinking about how we memorialize the dead versus how the Romans did it.  They make great connections between Roman customs and the celebrations we have at an Episcopal school such as Halloween, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day.

I start the unit by using this Powerpoint to introduce the concepts, to get them thinking, and to start looking at some simple Latin epitaphs and talking about the specific vocabulary need to read the next epitaphs we'll look at.  Students really enjoy reading and learning about people they would not hear about otherwise.  Another plus of the unit is that we get to reinforce all of those praenomen abbreviations that we talked about in preparation for our Dies Lustricus celebration last month.

After the Powerpoint, we move on to looking at several tombstones, for which I have created tiered readings. I introduce the first two with a Movietalk for each and then a Dictatio with a simplified version of the Latin, i.e. the first tier.  Here are those materials:

 MovieTalk for Monument I
Dictatio for Monument I

This first monument is a riff off of Pacuvius' epitaph so we take a look at that too.

MovieTalk for Monument II
Dictatio for Monument II

(Many thanks to Bob Patrick and Rachel Ash for sharing the templates I used to create those MovieTalks and Dictationes.)

Students have lots of fun with this unit, and I supplement it with the singing of Parvula Arachne and Arida Ossa which both reinforce vocabulary.  "Ossa" is used in that first monument and "parvula" helps me teach about diminuatives, which is also reinforced by the word "saxolus" also in that first monument.

Following the reading of these epitaphs, students are tasked with creating their own epitaphs in Latin, which I display on the wall in my room.  They create a first draft, and then edit that with peer help.  I then proofread the second draft for them.  Google classroom makes that process pretty easy.  Then, they simply use an appropriate font, large size, and all caps to print out the tombstone.  After cutting it into the shape they want, they add appropriately an spooky black paper backing with glue or double-sided tape.  Assembly takes 10-15 minutes since there is a printer in my classroom for their use.



This unit ties in nicely with the season of Spooktober.  I find it also has many connections to the letters of Cambridge Stage 35.  I'd love to hear about what others do for Halloween in their Latin classes. - Parva