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Some teachers feel like they just can't waste a moment and dive into the book. They think that explaining how they want a paper to be formatted just once will be enough. Or they claim they don't care and then spend twice as much time grading because a poorly formatted, punctuated paper is difficult to read.
It's much easier to skip stuff later on, when kids are used to Latin, the book and to what you want, then early on. That just makes the rest of the year more miserable for you.
I have a lot of students with mediocre academic skills. I have to teach how I want my heading to look (well, it's the same heading the school uses), how I want the title to be written on an assignment, that I want a line skipped before beginning work, etc.
I made a sheet last year that MODELED what I want papers to look like, with additional notes in the margins pointing out things.
This sheet is posted on the bulletin board by student work besides going in each of their folders.
But then I do another thing--I have them work in cooperative groups with rotating jobs. Here are the jobs:
1. LICTOR: makes sure everyone has a proper heading on his/her paper, has written his/her job title in the right spot, and is following quality work formatting (punctuation, capitalization, spelling).
2. LECTOR: reads the sentences in Latin or the questions on a worksheet, helps everyone to focus on the exact sentence where the answer will be found.
3. VOCABULARIUS/A: looks up vocabulary when meanings are unknown
4. GRAMMATICUS/A: focuses everyone on key grammar issues for the stage; points out endings, makes everyone look at their model sentences if needed.
These jobs rotate too, of course. The lictor, in many ways, has the easiest job but the most important. Until you've read a paper/translation that has NO capitalization, NO punctuation, NO indentations, etc, you can't imagine how important this is.
And kids this age are forgetful. Just having someone around to say, "Did you put periods on all your sentences?" not only helps everyone learn to do it, but prevents them from losing points for the unrelated-to-Latin stuff.
The lector drives the group by reading the story and keeping the group focused on where they are. The vocabularius can look up unknown words. And the grammaticus helps the group focus on new grammar concepts. For instance, I specifically told the grammatici today to make sure people were not splitting their verbs. That is, for canis in viA dormit, I want "The dog is sleeping in the street" NOT "The dog is in the street sleeping." It's trivial, but it gets them thinking about the little stuff. The other thing I charged the grammatici with was making sure everyone used ARTICLES in their English translations.
Little stuff, but important stuff.
Later on, the grammaticus would be focusing on the new tense indicator or whatever. And, his job isn't to be the smart one, just to keep pointing out the new stuff and together they can help each other with the translations.
You get peer teaching.
And the grades will still vary. No, I don't do group grades. I hate that personally, so I won't do it to the kids.
But I want them thinking that they are soldiers that need to make sure that no man is left behind.
I will be teaching them how to ask each other questions like, "HOW do you know that it's dogs plural?" or, for the smart kids who feel they are being copied off of, "Do you see how this ending works?" etc.
When the quality of the work goes up, so do the grades, including test grades.
It's worth trying.
It's much easier to skip stuff later on, when kids are used to Latin, the book and to what you want, then early on. That just makes the rest of the year more miserable for you.
I have a lot of students with mediocre academic skills. I have to teach how I want my heading to look (well, it's the same heading the school uses), how I want the title to be written on an assignment, that I want a line skipped before beginning work, etc.
I made a sheet last year that MODELED what I want papers to look like, with additional notes in the margins pointing out things.
This sheet is posted on the bulletin board by student work besides going in each of their folders.
But then I do another thing--I have them work in cooperative groups with rotating jobs. Here are the jobs:
1. LICTOR: makes sure everyone has a proper heading on his/her paper, has written his/her job title in the right spot, and is following quality work formatting (punctuation, capitalization, spelling).
2. LECTOR: reads the sentences in Latin or the questions on a worksheet, helps everyone to focus on the exact sentence where the answer will be found.
3. VOCABULARIUS/A: looks up vocabulary when meanings are unknown
4. GRAMMATICUS/A: focuses everyone on key grammar issues for the stage; points out endings, makes everyone look at their model sentences if needed.
These jobs rotate too, of course. The lictor, in many ways, has the easiest job but the most important. Until you've read a paper/translation that has NO capitalization, NO punctuation, NO indentations, etc, you can't imagine how important this is.
And kids this age are forgetful. Just having someone around to say, "Did you put periods on all your sentences?" not only helps everyone learn to do it, but prevents them from losing points for the unrelated-to-Latin stuff.
The lector drives the group by reading the story and keeping the group focused on where they are. The vocabularius can look up unknown words. And the grammaticus helps the group focus on new grammar concepts. For instance, I specifically told the grammatici today to make sure people were not splitting their verbs. That is, for canis in viA dormit, I want "The dog is sleeping in the street" NOT "The dog is in the street sleeping." It's trivial, but it gets them thinking about the little stuff. The other thing I charged the grammatici with was making sure everyone used ARTICLES in their English translations.
Little stuff, but important stuff.
Later on, the grammaticus would be focusing on the new tense indicator or whatever. And, his job isn't to be the smart one, just to keep pointing out the new stuff and together they can help each other with the translations.
You get peer teaching.
And the grades will still vary. No, I don't do group grades. I hate that personally, so I won't do it to the kids.
But I want them thinking that they are soldiers that need to make sure that no man is left behind.
I will be teaching them how to ask each other questions like, "HOW do you know that it's dogs plural?" or, for the smart kids who feel they are being copied off of, "Do you see how this ending works?" etc.
When the quality of the work goes up, so do the grades, including test grades.
It's worth trying.
