Just a quick comment about AP (OK, it was quick before I started typing). One of the reasons I have been teaching the way I have is because a certain segment of my students' parents expect them to do well on the AP exam. It used to be that they expected that by the end of Latin III! Now I'm telling them they can't possibly be ready until Latin IV (keep in mind RRISD doesn't have Latin in the MS's). Anyway, I kind of hate the AP exam. I love reading the literature with my students, but you can do pretty well on the free response portion if you memorize all the poems in English.
Anyway, the thing that really caught my eye was where you said, "It often covers more lines that the equivalent university course, the test, some have said, is more demanding than the typical university test for the 312 level class...." One of my students has really been struggling in the AP class this year. His parents have finally started looking in to getting him a tutor. I gave them the tutor list from the UT Classics Department. His mother let me know that he met with one of the undergraduate students on the tutor list, and that after having looked over a few of my student's tests and the syllabus, he decided he was not comfortable with that level of Latin. Now, I don't know what level that UT student was--for all I know he could have been a first or second year student--but it was interesting that this high school course was at so seemingly high a level. And it made me wonder if the parents thought I was some kind of crazy lady teaching high school students as if they're grad students!
Westwood also has the International Baccalaureate program, which I definitely prefer to the AP program. You still have to translate a passage on the exam, but you get to use a dictionary, and the passage is from a prescribed offer (Ovid, the past few years), so in class you just read anything you want from that author to get used to his style and vocabulary so you're comfortable reading something (anything) of his on exam day. But then there are more meaningful questions and essays, and at the higher level (and soon to be at the standard level, too), the students have a choice of doing an expressive reading of a passage with a commentary on why they chose to read the way they chose to, or a research dossier (kind of like an annotated bibliography), or a Latin composition written in the style of a classical author with a commentary. Now that EXCITES me!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rosecarmine
AP
Date: 2006-03-15 05:27 am (UTC)Anyway, the thing that really caught my eye was where you said, "It often covers more lines that the equivalent university course, the test, some have said, is more demanding than the typical university test for the 312 level class...." One of my students has really been struggling in the AP class this year. His parents have finally started looking in to getting him a tutor. I gave them the tutor list from the UT Classics Department. His mother let me know that he met with one of the undergraduate students on the tutor list, and that after having looked over a few of my student's tests and the syllabus, he decided he was not comfortable with that level of Latin. Now, I don't know what level that UT student was--for all I know he could have been a first or second year student--but it was interesting that this high school course was at so seemingly high a level. And it made me wonder if the parents thought I was some kind of crazy lady teaching high school students as if they're grad students!
Westwood also has the International Baccalaureate program, which I definitely prefer to the AP program. You still have to translate a passage on the exam, but you get to use a dictionary, and the passage is from a prescribed offer (Ovid, the past few years), so in class you just read anything you want from that author to get used to his style and vocabulary so you're comfortable reading something (anything) of his on exam day. But then there are more meaningful questions and essays, and at the higher level (and soon to be at the standard level, too), the students have a choice of doing an expressive reading of a passage with a commentary on why they chose to read the way they chose to, or a research dossier (kind of like an annotated bibliography), or a Latin composition written in the style of a classical author with a commentary. Now that EXCITES me!
-Jeanine