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Ok, I'm trying to put more Latin into my Latin class--more oral Latin, more learning Latin via Latin and not via English. With middle school classes, esp mine, it is often best to start small and familiar and grow gradually toward something larger and less familiar. So the micrologue I wrote was for a story we'd already read: Cerberus.
The micrologue consisted of line drawings for the following sentences:
1) coquus in culInA dormit.
2) cibus est in mEnsA.
3) canis salit.
4) "pestis!" coquus clAmat.
Having asked for a volunteer, I teach the sentences to the volunteer via the pictures and orally/aurally. No words. The rest of the class treats the story as dictation. I go through it multiple times with dramatics, then question to elicit the sentences (I need to work on better wording of questions), and then the student does the sentences. Ok, these were dirt easy, plus they knew the story.
After, we reveal the text, correct dictation, and hand it in. Later on, I will formally grade dictation (at least on a rubric). I just wanted to see if they could follow directions and determine whether I wasn't making any particular vowels long enough when speaking.
Following the micrologue we did some substitution drills. I drilled one row at a time, trying to hit each person twice; the best performing row got chocolate, I admit. (I also thought of letting them go first at the bell.) The drill was taking the sentence coquus in culInA dormit, repeating that many times until we were used to it, and then we substituted in different prepositional phrases. I don't know why prep phrases are sticking point with modern students, but they are. (Perhaps they should learn how to diagram!) So I would snap and point and say, "in viA", if right, I'd move to the next person and give a different prep phrase ("in hortO"), but if wrong I'd ask the next person the same, and then come back and give the student another chance with the same question after he heard it correctly.
*MOST* did better than I had expected with this. A few just couldn't bend their minds around it, and I noted one was a girl that I know I have an IEP (special ed document) on. So, she may just have real problems with this sort of thing.
So, all and all it went well.
NOW, here's what I'm working toward--and I feel you should always be working toward when it gets hard in Latin, even if that isn't until the next year or the year after that. In the future, I want to do the micrologue on a story that has NOT been read. I want the micrologue and the substitution drill to be the mental warm-up/prep for READING A STORY ON THEIR OWN. I want them to go home next time, READ the story, WRITE a summary (always a good skill to develop), and be prepared for a T/F quiz the next day plus one sentence like the substitution drill to translate into English.
I find that the 8th graders spend so much time freaking over the increasing length of the stories that they forget I'm teaching them really good reading skills. And I think part of the problem is that they never develop any sense of "I can do this on my own"/"I don't need someone to hold my hand". If I were to ask the 8th graders to currently take home a story and read it on their own, they would freak, and they aren't bad students. But I didn't train them to ever do any totally independent, you're-all-you've-got reading last year, outside of the sight passage on the tests followed by reading comp questions. And I got them trained up to do better on those than students from previous years, but what I really want is the ability to say, "READ THAT FOR HOME."
How else will I get them prepared to read X many lines for an AP class? Or how else could I cover all the stories in CLC Unit 3? Or, if I ever teach high school, how could I cover both Unit 1 & 2 in high school in one year? If I just assigned the stories without teaching them how to read them, how to approach them WITH CONFIDENCE, I'd have a lot of people not reading the stories or starting to bomb out of Latin. And, frankly, I don't want a class full of smart kids. Oh, sure, there are times I do--think of all I could try and assign--but I've learned more from the kids who really don't know how to learn, who don't know how to tap into their own mental skills yet.
ANYWAY.
That's what I did today in 7th.
8th grade is working on some verb review material. I have these practice conjugation sheets that have pres, imp, and perf to practice on the front of a particular conjugation verb (ambulo for 1st conj, for instance) with a place on the back for any 1st conjugation verb I want.
No, CLC doesn't really work forms in this great a detail, but I want my students to leave here really knowing their stuff this year (or so I say) so that they can deal with Unit 3. I like to think of it this way: if something happened and I had to teach at the high school next year, what would I wish I had done better? Since Unit 3 is mainly one verb form after another, I decided that I could start attacking verbs with a little more energy. So, verb review and 1/2 of the Boudicca video tomorrow (class is too short to show it all in one period). We start the text on Friday. Odd day to start it, but why not?
And, no, no word on our textbooks.... yeah, right, like we'll ever see them. Well, I've just revised my oral recitation list (more on that tomorrow perhaps?) to match up with the new edition of the text. I hope we get it at some point....
The micrologue consisted of line drawings for the following sentences:
1) coquus in culInA dormit.
2) cibus est in mEnsA.
3) canis salit.
4) "pestis!" coquus clAmat.
Having asked for a volunteer, I teach the sentences to the volunteer via the pictures and orally/aurally. No words. The rest of the class treats the story as dictation. I go through it multiple times with dramatics, then question to elicit the sentences (I need to work on better wording of questions), and then the student does the sentences. Ok, these were dirt easy, plus they knew the story.
After, we reveal the text, correct dictation, and hand it in. Later on, I will formally grade dictation (at least on a rubric). I just wanted to see if they could follow directions and determine whether I wasn't making any particular vowels long enough when speaking.
Following the micrologue we did some substitution drills. I drilled one row at a time, trying to hit each person twice; the best performing row got chocolate, I admit. (I also thought of letting them go first at the bell.) The drill was taking the sentence coquus in culInA dormit, repeating that many times until we were used to it, and then we substituted in different prepositional phrases. I don't know why prep phrases are sticking point with modern students, but they are. (Perhaps they should learn how to diagram!) So I would snap and point and say, "in viA", if right, I'd move to the next person and give a different prep phrase ("in hortO"), but if wrong I'd ask the next person the same, and then come back and give the student another chance with the same question after he heard it correctly.
*MOST* did better than I had expected with this. A few just couldn't bend their minds around it, and I noted one was a girl that I know I have an IEP (special ed document) on. So, she may just have real problems with this sort of thing.
So, all and all it went well.
NOW, here's what I'm working toward--and I feel you should always be working toward when it gets hard in Latin, even if that isn't until the next year or the year after that. In the future, I want to do the micrologue on a story that has NOT been read. I want the micrologue and the substitution drill to be the mental warm-up/prep for READING A STORY ON THEIR OWN. I want them to go home next time, READ the story, WRITE a summary (always a good skill to develop), and be prepared for a T/F quiz the next day plus one sentence like the substitution drill to translate into English.
I find that the 8th graders spend so much time freaking over the increasing length of the stories that they forget I'm teaching them really good reading skills. And I think part of the problem is that they never develop any sense of "I can do this on my own"/"I don't need someone to hold my hand". If I were to ask the 8th graders to currently take home a story and read it on their own, they would freak, and they aren't bad students. But I didn't train them to ever do any totally independent, you're-all-you've-got reading last year, outside of the sight passage on the tests followed by reading comp questions. And I got them trained up to do better on those than students from previous years, but what I really want is the ability to say, "READ THAT FOR HOME."
How else will I get them prepared to read X many lines for an AP class? Or how else could I cover all the stories in CLC Unit 3? Or, if I ever teach high school, how could I cover both Unit 1 & 2 in high school in one year? If I just assigned the stories without teaching them how to read them, how to approach them WITH CONFIDENCE, I'd have a lot of people not reading the stories or starting to bomb out of Latin. And, frankly, I don't want a class full of smart kids. Oh, sure, there are times I do--think of all I could try and assign--but I've learned more from the kids who really don't know how to learn, who don't know how to tap into their own mental skills yet.
ANYWAY.
That's what I did today in 7th.
8th grade is working on some verb review material. I have these practice conjugation sheets that have pres, imp, and perf to practice on the front of a particular conjugation verb (ambulo for 1st conj, for instance) with a place on the back for any 1st conjugation verb I want.
No, CLC doesn't really work forms in this great a detail, but I want my students to leave here really knowing their stuff this year (or so I say) so that they can deal with Unit 3. I like to think of it this way: if something happened and I had to teach at the high school next year, what would I wish I had done better? Since Unit 3 is mainly one verb form after another, I decided that I could start attacking verbs with a little more energy. So, verb review and 1/2 of the Boudicca video tomorrow (class is too short to show it all in one period). We start the text on Friday. Odd day to start it, but why not?
And, no, no word on our textbooks.... yeah, right, like we'll ever see them. Well, I've just revised my oral recitation list (more on that tomorrow perhaps?) to match up with the new edition of the text. I hope we get it at some point....
