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ginlindzey

October 2017

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Although my Latn 2 and 3 classes will be taught via CLC this year (Latin 1 and some Latin 2 classes are taught by my fellow teacher), Latin 4 will be whatever I want.  It's not worked out.  I don't have a syllabus.  I'm flying by the seat of my pants. I'm not sure how I'm going to be grading / assessing them yet. I'm running out of time and I will figure out the basics (at least of how I will grade them!) very soon. I do know I'm going to be using as much CI (Comprehensible Input) and TPRS as I can.  Yet I've never "asked a story," and never really felt comfortable circling questions.  hohum. minor details.... (not)

With that said, I do have a vision and a couple of goals.  I want to make this year a year of consolidation and internalizing all that we have learned before.  I want students to take the SAT Latin exam in December, and the ACTFL Alira in May.  Those are my goals.  My vision is a year where we explore passages from a wide variety of authors from different time periods, where we have hands-on experiences with the language, where we lose our fear of writing or speaking. And we recognize that Latin is more than a means to better verbal scores.

I have spent the summer on two projects. The first was the CLC grammar stuff from previous posts.  The second was trying to pick passages I wanted to start with, analyzing them for certain concepts I want to include, and for things I can build towards--that is, concepts I can teach a different way earlier in the week which will seem unconnected at the time but will all come together to make reading the targeted passage seemless with the end result that we can spend more time talking about the heart of the passage--the author's intent--and anything else. I want it to be a pleasure to read not a chore. I want them to learn to love Latin for Latin. Right now, I'd say they love Latin 90% for me, 10% Latin. And that's ok. Most of the things I've enjoyed studying over the years was not about the subject, but because the teacher was just so damned enthusiastic about it that it was contagious. But I want them to be able to love Latin without me.

The first passage which has basically been calling out to me is Catullus 13. I have been making a bunch of notes and annotations for myself, which I will try to copy and include here:

Cēnābis bene, [GL1] Fabulle[GL2] [GL3] , apud mē
paucīs, sī tibi dī favent[GL4] , diēbus[GL5] ,
sī tēcum attuleris [GL6] bonam atque magnam
cēnam, nōn sine candidā puellā[GL7]
et vīnō et sale [GL8] et omnibus cachinnīs.
haec sī, inquam, attuleris, venuste [GL9] noster[GL10] ,
cēnābis bene; nam tuī Catullī[GL11]
plēnus sacculus [GL12] est arāneārum.
sed contrā accipiēs merōs [GL13] amōrēs
seu quid suavius elegantiusve[GL14] est:
nam unguentum [GL15] dabō, quod meae puellae[GL16]
dōnārunt Venerēs Cupidinēsque,
quod tu cum olfaciēs[GL17] , deōs rogābis,
tōtum ut tē faciant, Fabulle, nāsum.

[GL1]Use vocative of student names with mī from the beginning. ō Marce, mī Marce, quid agis hodiē?! etc.
[GL2]Is he writing a letter? Running into Fabullus in the street?
[GL3]Where do you think this takes place? In the street? in a letter? in the public toilets? at a fast food counter? HAVE PICTURES
[GL4]Surely I can start using this phrase with football games.  We will win sī nōbīs deus favet.
[GL5]Use paucīs diēbus and the future tense leading up to the day we read this.
[GL6]Find ways of using the forms of fero so much that it is second nature.
[GL7]Make sure you have looked at pictures of Romans in frescos first, especially at dinner parties, and discuss that the woman is fair and the man is tan.  (What’s tan in Latin?) (What’s darker vs lighter when referring to color?)
[GL8]If looking at a picture of Romans at a dinner party, can we see these things on the table?
[GL9]QUID SIGNIFICAT? venustus = lovely, charming, pleasing, elegant
[GL10]Royal We? ō Marce, mī Marce; ecce, amīcī, Marcus noster adest!
[GL11]How will I work genitives in front in?
[GL12]have a picture of a Roman with a purse on his him or the arm band purse to talk about what a “sacculus” is
[GL13]How will I work in merus = pure, unmixed, unadulterated. Maybe ask earlier in the week what they drink?  Maybe mix a drink in front of them.  Lemonade? Could be the same day I do smells.  Smells and tastes? (sī cum aquā ius limonis miscuerimus, limonadum faciēmus.)(Find out what lemonade really is in Latin.)
[GL14]neuter comparatives; how will I work these? OH, when discussing the Orberg reading!
[GL15]was perfume highly prized? was it a liquid or ointment? Find out.  Is it in the Latin wiki?
[GL16]Is she giving it away?  Does it really stink?  Is Catullus allergic to it?
[GL17]work in advance about animal smells (olet) versus us smelling animals (olfacit)

***
So, those are just some brainstorming notes.  I have plans for activities for several days before we read this so that when we read it should read fairly smoothly. For instance, to have their brains set and ready for the vocatives, I need to just make a big deal about using the vocatives of their names. To make sure they understand venuste noster--or at least noster used with the vocative--I intend to work that in when using the vocative with students. That sort of wonderful royal we. So that's small and easy. I just have to remember to do it.  And if possible, I can work in adjectives in the vocative too.

I want to work in plenus with the genitive during the week.  I also want to work in some classroom Latin.  So I'm going to get some paper lunch bags (sacculus) and fill them with different things: fibiculae chartarum - paper clips, gluten - glue (sticks), forfices - scissors, etc.  Then we can discuss what's in the little sacks - what they are full of - and then WHOSE bag has what (to work in the genitive).  sacculus Marcī est plēnus forficum.  I intend to use circling (questions with yes answer first, then no, then a choice, then open ended, etc).

I'm thinking about having perfume in one of the little sacks.  But I was thinking about whether the perfume would have been liquid or ointment or either.  I have bought fragrances in the past that were more of an ointment.  In fact, I probably will do that.  THEN maybe I can work in a discussion of olet vs olfacit. All in Latin. And from there I could work in some body parts.  You smell with your nose, and that could lead into maybe a song of Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes in Latin.

I have some materials (not directly related to this activity) which students will need to assemble, so learning terms for paper clips, glue, scissors, stapler/staples, etc, could be immediately put to use. If we have time that day.  It's possible.

I also intend to use Orberg's Lingua Latina as an easy reader to begin to develop the idea of extensive reading. Depending upon what we're told at in-service about required things we have to do, I intend to assign reading the first chapter Monday night and discussing it in class the next day. It's the chapter on geography. I thought I would review comparatives while talking about different things mentioned in the text (which island is larger? smaller?) etc.  I need to make sure I work in neuter comparatives so that the neuter comparatives (suavius et elegantius) will be no problem when we get to Catullus.

And either before or on the day we do the Catullus reading, I want to show some frescos of dinner party scenes (probably before) so the concept of a candida puella can be understood. I want to be able to discuss content not grammar, not how it all goes together. I want to discuss different scenarios beside Catullus just sending this in the form of a letter or published poem.  Can they imagine him running into Fabullus on the streets of Rome? Where? There's Martial's epigram (which they read last year) about the guy who hangs around in public toilets trying to get invites to dinner. I also am still trying to understand the perfume bit--is he only giving away the smell of the perfume? That is, you have to come over and sniff my girl to smell it?  Or what? Or is he saying that his girl naturally smells amazing because the gods have made it so?  (I'm sure I have a text at school with commentary on this.) But how fun to actually have a discussion, hopefully most of it in Latin but ok if we have to switch to English, about all of these issues, instead of spending the whole period just "translating" word for word.

So, I have all of these ideas.  They are probably too much and too out there in some ways, but I think back to Rusticatio and all the things Nancy would teach us which she would then combine rather seemlessly later on. And of course she had a plan; it couldn't have been coincidence.

Somewhere in all of this I will probably do some dictation.  And afterwards I may even do a substitution drill of some sort, maybe with conditionals. If I were Fabullus, I would.... well, I don't know.  Haven't worked that out.  Or maybe, because indirect statements were the last things we were working on last year, I could do a dictation afterwords that is made up of indirect statements.  Catullus dixit Fabullum bene cenaturum esse. etc.

Anyway.  Enough of brainstorming in the blog.  I need to get it all organized tomorrow.  Make some serious plans.  But all of this DEFINITELY beats read/translate into English.
This was another posting to Latinteach this week:

***
For extensive reading, there's nothing like handing a level 2 student Oerberg's Lingua Latina. It starts so easy that you can get students to work on TRULY reading in WORD ORDER. In an ideal world, (maybe when I do pre-AP?) I would love to assign a chapter from that a weekend, and require Latin summaries for homework.

We have this idea that the only way to access Latin/to demonstrate that we understand Latin is by presenting a good translation. That just isn't the case.

I am constantly amazed by how much I can appreciate what I call a "fully loaded" Latin sentence--abl absolutes, phrases, clauses--and totally understand the meaning and WHY the words are in the order they are, phrased the way they are, etc.--AND YET, if I were to try to translate the same sentence into English it would be clumsy or if nothing else wordy.

Very few professors it seems (no offense!) offer any other way to access the language except through providing translations, often focusing on the importance of an eloquent translation. Jeanne at Davidson College actually asks students to explain the Latin in the Latin! And she always assigns more than a person could actually sit down and translate, but not more than a person could READ.

I am also puzzled how we go from the Cambridge Latin Course, with its ever lengthening stories to AP where was suddenly go back to just a dozen lines at a go. And with that said, I do know it is critical once you are in AP to make sure students have truly mastered their morphology and perhaps there is that feeling that one must demand exact precision, which can mean slowing down. But there must be a happy medium.

And I think it is extensive reading. I think it is the importance of demonstrating to students at some point before AP that they can read in word order, that it is pleasurable to READ Latin, even if it is easier Latin, that it is POSSIBLE to read Latin without knowing every single darn word on the page and to get meaning and pleasure from it, etc.

And then, when we return to reading the more serious or difficult material at the current level of learning, we must also remember NOT to just focus on a portion at a time.

Last year, when I had a student reading Ovid in independent study, every time we had a chance to go over the reading together, I would read the Latin outloud from the beginning of the story until the place we were working on. It is AMAZING how that simple act of rereading and reviewing will suddenly make vocabulary items jump out at you--words that are thematically related or simply repeated.

AP students would be greatly served by being trained--well in advance of AP--the importance of reading and rereading the text as a text, and not a set of lines to be decoded and then memorized if possible. Students shouldn't be studying for tests by reviewing all the translations they've written, but by rereading the Latin--seeing the words, seeing the phrasing, etc.
***

Now, with all that said, am I doing extensive reading with my students?? No. Have I ever done? Yes. I tried an experiement one year with my 8th graders back at Porter. It went ok. I had reading logs for them, which they had to fill out and record whether they had done any prereading, etc, and then wrote a summary. Of course, it benefitted the A students but many others didn't do it.

So, I guess the question is, HOW do you get students to do this, HOW do you have accountability WITHOUT creating more work for you???

I'm thinking that if I have a pre-AP level 3 Latin class year after next that extensive reading will be one of the requirements--for over the weekend. I'll get a set of Lingua Latina, start easy, etc, and have summaries written in Latin due on Mondays. Then students can trade summaries and read them.

It may well be possible with the Latin 1's I have now, since I do have them writing stories in Latin every now and then. In fact, I have stories to post, I just haven't had a chance to post them yet.

Who knows? Maybe I will one day have all my great ideas put into action. One can dream....

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