Lacernella Rubra

My students love stories.  They have been begging for a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood since we were at NJCL this summer.  My Latin 3 class latched on to the idea at the start of this year, so I decided to use the story to acquire some new vocabulary in addition to checking on their understanding of several different uses of the subjunctive.

I began with the story of Lacernella Rubra in Fabulae Mirabiles, though I modified it limit new vocabulary and to fix some of the grammatical errors (e.g. domum rather than ad domum).

In class, we started with a dictatio, which I always have kids write in their spirals.  Once we got to about the second sentence of this dictatio, the students began realizing it was the story they had been requesting.  (Thanks to Bob Patrick for the template I used for this.)  It helped that I had defined the new word lacernam on the board for them.   Even the slowest processors of the group had figured it out by sentence seven.  The amazing thing was how palpable their excitement was to do this story since it was their idea.

After going over the meaning of the dictatio on the second day, we watched this video while I narrated the story in Latin, asking questions along the way to review the vocabulary and to check for understanding.

On the third day, after this quick vocabulary check, we explored the middle part of the story with this second dictatio.  The most interesting thing about this one was how students reacted to the indirect statement on slide two and to the indirect question on slide seven.  Many students had started to punctuate those slides with quotation marks.  When they weren't present as we checked their work with the slides, I was intrigued with how they asked much deeper questions than I have had students ask before after direct grammar instruction about those structures.

On the fourth day, an administrator came to observe the lesson.   We started with a quick vocabulary assessment.  I've adopted the strategy this year of allowing students to go over their work with a partner seated beside them before we check as a class.  I've been pleased with how this both gives students more repetitions with the Latin while also making them accountable to each other.  In an end of the trimester survey, most students reported that they were more focused on mastering the language this year, and I partly attribute it to this change in practice.  After the mastery check, I had students act out the story, while I narrated, asked questions, and fed them lines to say.  The students continued to be engaged.  We finished up the lesson with a quick Dance Party USA translation activity to review the story.  I had asked my administrator to pay attention to how much of the time I spoke in Latin, and he reported that he estimated I did so 60% of the time.  I was pleased with this progress as I was not speaking nearly that much Latin at this time last year; however, I am still hoping to be at about 70% consistently by the end of this year.  The administrator did think that by time we got to the Dance Party USA part of the lesson, the kids were tired of translating and going over the same story.  I think that part of the reason that section of the lesson fizzled because my sound board wasn't working properly, so I wasn't able to play music as effectively as I had hoped.  However, I am sensitive to the fact that a lot of my Latin class is often listening to, reading or otherwise working with a text or story.  This is an area I need to keep working and pondering.  I know my students are gaining proficiency from reading and rereading, but I need to keep working to make sure it is never monotonous.

I wrapped up the unit with this assessment, or Celebration of Knowledge, as I call it.  Two things surprised me in a good way about this assessment.  First, I have begun the practice of allowing students to work with a partner on the section they identify as most challenging for them.  (I pair students up after both identify the same part as challenging.)  They work in a different color pen so that I can see what they did on their own versus what they can do with a partner.  I've been struck by two things as I've incorporated this practice:
1.  Working together with someone else who is challenged motivates students to persevere and stay engaged with the work longer.
2.  Students who are my fast language processors tend to work on the assessment for the whole period without help from others.

The other thing that surprised me about this assessment was the extra credit that I gave to students for identifying the type of subjunctive clause.  Many of these had been taught to students the year before, but I had never directly taught the terms "fearing clause" or "conditional."  The students had asked about the fearing clause in the story during one of the many times we retold it, but I don't believe we had talked much about conditionals more than in passing.  A large portion of the students could identify the use of the subjunctive, and several were about to identify the conditional and fearing class.  Most importantly, at the end of the assessment period, one student came up to me and said, "I can answer all the questions, but I still don't REALLY get why these verbs are subjunctive."  When I explained it was because they were secondary or subordinate in the sentence, his eyes lit up.  The lightbulb had gone on.

This was certainly the most effective way that I've ever "reviewed" subjunctive clauses with kids.  Their desire to hear this story made them much more eager for the lessons, and they had a much greater need to understand the grammatical structures than if I had taught them in a more direct way. - Parva

Initium Scholae

I had a former student who is starting her first year of teaching text me a few weeks ago for some start of school tips.  Her text got me thinking a lot about how I start the school year.  I first thought about what kind of advice I got twenty-three years ago when I started teaching and how different my teaching is today. I was told, "Don't let them see you smile until November."  Conversely, my advice to her was, "Smile..... Have fun with the kids and be generous with yourself."  I added, ""Think through your procedures.  Be firm but kind when you enforce them.  Do enforce them."  I find that the procedures in my room fall into place these days without much elaboration on my part.  Through a variety of means, I communicate clearly to kids that their enthusiastic participation is expected each day.  My students comply with this expectation cheerfully.  I suspect it is because I let them into my world soon into the school year.

I almost always begin with a slideshow about my life and my summer that I tell them about in Latin.  Typically, I tell the story in Latin and check for understanding in English.  There are lots of pictures of my family, friends and pets, such as this one:

For the last two years, I have expanded this activity more and more.  Now, I spend about a week telling and reviewing my story.  I now circle information in Latin and still sometimes check for understanding in English.  I add details a little at a time and reinforce target vocabulary daily.

After the students hear, read, and know my story, I now ask each student to share their own slides shows.  Students spend several days writing short stories about themselves that they typically illustrate with Google slides, though they are allowed to make videos.  They work in partners and then with me to make sure they are communicating what they want to say.  The final product looks something like this example.  Then each student presents his story verbally in class, and students get a script of each other's stories that they can use for reading.

I find that these activities are not only an easy way to get back into Latin, but it also does such a good job of building community that we reap the benefits as a class all year long (and really beyond when it comes time for class sign-ups for the next year). - Parva

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.

Movie Talk: A Bear Story

Inspired by Keith Toda's recent blog post, I decided to try out my first Movie Talk. I first experienced a Movie Talk as a "student" last year when Von Ray did a TPRS workshop at our campus, and I found it to be a very entertaining way to hear many repetitions of target vocabulary. Movies are easily made compelling to students, and I loved the way this particular film, A Bear Story (cave: potentially a temporary link), was so emotionally engaging. Like Keith Toda, I had a student on the verge of tears when I showed the film the first time.

The Planning Process

To be honest, I selected this particular Movie Talk because I happened to read Keith Toda's post and my 7th graders happened to know most of the vocabulary words used in the script. I think you could plan a Movie Talk one of two ways, though:

• Find a video you like and teach it. My next Movie Talk is going to feature Pixar's La Luna because I happened to come across it while I was watching something else on YouTube. It's emotionally engaging and ties in nicely with our work with family vocabulary words earlier in the school year. In writing the script, I focused on words the students knew and would see in Stages 2 and 3 of the Cambridge textbook.

• Decide on your target vocabulary and find a video. Databases like this one are helpful for finding video clips that are topic-specific. I also like the idea of giving students a list of target vocabulary words and having them send you some video ideas.

The Lesson

On the day of the Movie Talk, I wrote my target vocabulary on the board in English and Latin.

As we watched the video, I paused and discussed the action in the film with my students. I made sure to speak slowly and point at words as I used them. I sometimes asked questions and sometimes just narrated the action. My students were engaged and could clearly comprehend the action and respond in Latin. They would sometimes volunteer information that I hadn't said; they were eager to contribute their own ideas in Latin.

Next Steps

On Day 1, I was only able to show the film once (while pausing and speaking). On Day 2, I showed the film again, pausing in similar places, and asking students to contribute the captions or narrations aloud. We worked together in Latin to retell the story. 

Then, I grouped my students in pairs or triplets. I clicked ahead to key moments in the film and showed still images. I asked the students to write what was happening at that moment. I chose about 8 key moments from the video that we had discussed during the Movie Talk for this exercise. This was a more or less ad hoc activity that didn't require the creation of any materials or worksheets. I had students write their captions on notebook paper that was numbered 1-8. They still had access to the vocabulary on the board for this, which really helped their fluency. If they asked me how to say something in Latin, I just pointed at the board. I collected their sentences and will use them for an in-context vocabulary quiz (by underlining target vocabulary words for them to define) and as captions for them to illustrate on their upcoming test.

One of the topics that surfaced during this writing exercise was noun endings. We haven't talked about declensions yet in 7th grade, but I've now had 4 students (out of 8 total) ask specific questions about how they work. Here are some examples:

• "Why is it pictura familiae?"
• "Why is it cubiculum on the board, but you said in cubiculo?"
• "Why do you say ursus est laetus but familia est laeta?"

They are finding noun declensions compelling! They want to learn them because they're hearing their speech corrected. They are seeing patterns that they can't quite discern. They want to speak correctly and understand how the architecture works.

As Jennie said in a conversation we had recently, sometimes students get an immediate explanation of something that they're not quite ready to process and it goes way over their heads. In the case of my 7th graders, I think their puzzling is going to pay off because they'll be receptive to the explanation when they receive it and ready to use it immediately. That'll be our next grammar lesson.

Here is a link to my La Luna Movie Talk. Feel free to use it and add comments if you have ideas to share.

Have you used a Movie Talk? What are some other activities you've done after the initial Talk? Do you circle vocabulary before the initial Talk or just jump right in?

- Magistra K.

Initia

Situla, Magistra K, and I started on a journey last year to inject more Comprehensible Input into our Latin classes using a variety of methods, including TPRS.   We decided to start this blog as a way to share ideas with each other and the broader Latin teaching community.  As a bit of background, we all teach at a private school where kids get an introduction to Latin starting in sixth grade.  Magistra K is teaching the younger set, while Situla and I work with the kids in the upper grades.  We use the Cambridge Latin Course in many levels, but also do many things outside the textbook as well.  Looking forward to the journey.  - Parva aka Jennie