playing cards, relative pronouns, and stretching yourself

I just sent this to Latinteach, but thought I'd add a few more thoughts. I'd actually like to grade right now but I'm monitoring a group of English students who are supposed to be reading silently. Frankly, this is babysitting a bunch of whiners; me, I'd love for someone to tell me that I *had* to sit quietly and read a good book. Please, twist my arm. My problem would be trying to decide WHICH BOOK! But not this crowd. So I'm standing up watching the class and typing. (The things we do....)

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(posted to Latinteach:)

So today half the school is gone, attending a state soccer match (cheering on the team). With classes light, I decided it was a day to play cards in Latin.

So, to add a little tie-in to our current grammar topic, I had everyone make nameplates to put in front of them while we play. Each nameplate had to have:

1) their name
2) a relative clause starting with a nominative
3) a relative clause starting with an accusative

My example on the board is:

Magistra,
quae linguam Latinam amat,
quam discipuli amant,...

for a guy:

Spartacus,
qui puellas amat,
quem puellae amant,...

When we play Go Fish (I PiscAtum), the students have to begin by calling on the person and saying one of the two relative clauses before asking "habesne ullas reginas?" If they fail to say one of the clauses, the student being asked does NOT have to hand over the requested cards but can just reply I PISCATUM!!! So it would go like this:

Magistra, quam discipuli amant, habesne ullas reginas? (non habeo, i piscatum!)

To add motivation, the students all have 10 paper coins, and anytime someone speaks in English instead of Latin they yell out DA MIHI NUMMUM! The person with the most coins at the end of class gets double candy. (Winners of each game also get candy.)

Anyway, it's been a lively day.

For those wanting my I PISCATUM guidelines, they are online at http://www.txclassics.org/ginny_lindzey.htm (a PDF file... and I think there's still a typo in the PDF file).

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What I wanted to elaborate on is what it's like for me as the teacher in the room. First, I tell them that if I talk in English, they can demand a coin from me as well. There's a cheat sheet that I've used in the past for an all-Latin day that has a couple of handy phrases on it:

licetne mihi loqui Anglice?
veni huc!
quo modo dicitur...?

etc

I tell them they can only as ME for permission to speak in English, no one else. I will try to reply in Latin unless it is too involved for even me. But I will try, and struggle in front of them, and make mistakes AND correct myself, etc etc. They need to see that speaking a language isn't necessarily easy, but it can be fun.

With some classes I have a chance to sit down and play with them. For instance, there were only 6 students in my split level today (because everyone was at the game, which we lost 3-2). So I sat with them to play. It was really funny to call on people based on what they wrote on the cards. One student had "qui pedes habet" another student (whose hair is so far down in his face he looks like Cousin It from the Addams Family) had "qui puellas delectat" and a girl had "quam feles vitat"--amusing stuff. I would model stretching outside our I Piscatum script by occasionally counting up the books that people had (tu duo libros habes, sed ego unum librum habeo) and things like that.

MOST of the kids had a good time today. Most did; but there's always one who really ruins it for the rest. That one whiner who sours their group because no one wants to seem nerdy enjoying a game of Latin cards. I had a threat in place, which I did not use, that anyone not being a good sport could spend the classtime copying Latin out of the book. How sad that we have to go that far and the kids just can't enjoy the moment!

What I like is when I feel like I'm answering the kids in Latin without thinking about answering in Latin--like I'm thinking in Latin. It makes me feel like I'm finally getting somewhere with my own Latin.