AP Syllabus Finished; working on Latin 3 vocab

[ginlindzey]

I finished my AP Syllabus.  It was a lot of work and a lot of *thought* with not much to show for it.  Just a piece of paper.  Well, you know what I mean.  I probably wasted a lot of time just CONTEMPLATING what I was going to do.  I'm still thinking I should have put much more into a review up front, but will figure that out later.  There just wasn't the time in the schedule.

I know I act like I know so much all the time, but I know I don't.  I have distinct ideas about what was wrong in my Latin education, and what I want my students to be able to do, but I'm still just striving to get there.    I think there are some things I do well, really well, but others that I do not do well--like timing/pacing.  So, with the whole AP year planned out, maybe I'll be better at pacing.

I have one week before I go off to Austin College, like I did two years ago.  Last time it was Cicero.  This year it will be Vergil.  So, it's time to break from Vergil and work on Latin 3 stuff.

One thing I did last summer that helped tremendously in teaching out of CLC Unit 3 for the first time was going through and finding all the vocabulary in the stories.  I then made a table in word which had all the sentences next to the vocab item.  I also indicated which story the sentence came from (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc, in the chapter).  When I found I needed to quicken my pace last year, I was able to pick which stories to do/focus on based on which ones had the majoirity of the vocabulary.  

So, I'm definitely doing this with Unit 4.  I've already done stages 35 and 36.  I definitely want to do through 40, and then contemplate where to go after that.   The main problem is that Latin 3 will be with Latin 4/AP, so with a split-level class I know we won't make the kind of progress I'd like.  It's also a squirrelly sort of group.  Oh, who knows.  Maybe if I found a way to keep up with grading this year I could make them more accountable and assign more for homework.  

But here's the thing (take note, if you are a new teacher):  if you are busy spending all your free time making the quizzes and tests and reading comp sheets or WHATEVER, it's hard to GRADE!  Something has to give, or at least you need to be aware that that's the trap you are setting for yourself.

Last year I was so busy creating stuff for Latin 2 and revising things for Latin 1, that I hardly got any grading of homework done.  I blamed English a lot (and it did have to come first a lot of the time), but next year I'll only have myself to blame.

I was giving myself a hard time earlier because I just don't have the same kind of time to do the more fun, creative things that I used to do when I taught middle school.  Part of me would just LOVE to teach middle school again.  I was GOOD at it, the kids really learned the Latin.  And I had time to do more for classics in general.  BUT...I need to learn how to do the whole thing, from beginning to end, from eggs to apples.   You will never understand where you weaknesses from one year until you have those same students the NEXT year.   

ANYWAY...So I've been working on my vocab lists.  I swear, I think my in-context vocab quizzes and quias (if used right!), really do help with the detalis.  That and metaphrasing.  Those are the two best tools I have, I think.  OH, and reading outloud.  Reading LOTS outloud.

If only I could get the students to do that more.  But that's something else to ponder.

OH, if anyone wants to look at my syllabus, it's at http://www.txclassics.org/APVergilSyllabus2008.pdf.  

With luck, it will get it's mark of approval and we will change Latin 4 to AP Latin.