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ginlindzey

October 2017

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This is something I hear about; it's something I experience. Usually, it's nothing we can make a big difference in the year it's happening (to a certain extent). This is when I start brainstorming about what the problems are and how to diminish the same problems the next year. I also try to fix what I can this year.

I teach from CLC. At this time of year as well as anticipating what the rest of the semester will be like, here are the problems:

Latin 1: noun-adj agreement, (or ever having learned Nom, Dat, and Acc cases), relative pronouns
Latin 2: how to tell the UT clauses apart; what the heck subjunctives are; (lacking) full understanding and appreciation of participles
Latin 3: present subjunctives vs future vs present indicative; infinitives (all sorts) in indirect discourse.

The other thing in general why students seem to lose it 2nd semester is that they aren't retaining what they were supposed to learn 1st semester and thus are frustrated and start to tune out. For your average kid, language learning takes lots of repetition and reinforcement. I always try to listen carefully to Latin 2 students at the beginning of the year to understand what stuck and what didn't. For instance, I use model sentences of my own design to help aide in learning NOM, DAT, & ACC endings and don't switch to a complete noun chart until GEN and ABL are added near the end of the year.

My model sentences are as follows:
NOM DAT ACC VERB
ancilla puellae statuam dat.
ancillae puellis statuas dant.
dominus servo anulum dabat.
domini servis anulos dabant.
mater* patri infantem dedit.
matres patribus infantes dederunt.

I line the words up in columns. The advantages of starting with something like this is that the students have a framework/a context in which to understand the endings. The slavegirl gives a statue to the girl. Function is apparent with the sentence, endings still line up in a useful fashion. The sentence pattern, NOM + DAT + ACC + Verb is often a common one in CLC at this point (plus it does show up in "real" Latin and is a useful pattern). (Hmmm.... I should write another entry about sentence patterns and why I like them in CLC.)

ANYWAY. Over the years I've found these sentence really helpful. However, I've had Latin 2 students telling me that they never got the sentences. We don't really use them after we start truly declining nouns, except in discussing sentence patterns.

So, where do I go wrong? What could help?

Obviously I didn't hammer in nearly enough why they are useful and how to use them. I didn't hammer in that it wasn't about the WORDS but about the endings. So this year with the Latin 1's now that we're into Unit 2 (several stages into knowing all three cases), we still SAY the whole sentences, but I only write out the endings on the board while we say them. In this way students are able to focus on the critical information. We review constantly how to remember the cases (and also the sentence pattern) -- Never (nom) Date (dat) A (acc) Vegetarian (verb), the fact that they are lined up singular plural singular plural, etc. So right now before we start doing the assigned warm-up:

N D A V
-------------------------
-a -ae -am -t
-ae -is -as -nt
--------------------------
-us -o -um -t
-i -is -os -nt
---------------------------
-* -i -em -t
-es -ibus -es -nt

Honestly, each year I use these model sentences, and I've been using them for a dozen years now, I find more benefits from them. First, I like having the SENTENCES for context. Once we start these in stage 9, this pattern is used again and again throughout the text (not to mention showing up in real Latin), and it helps students to see the pattern. Second, when we drop it down to just endings visually but keep saying the sentences that are able to MAINTAIN the connection that words and endings are integrated. Inflectional languages are such a different concept to kids.

This week, after we chanted out the sentences & wrote the endings on the board but before we went any further, we talked about how nouns and adjectives agree--and I gave a few simple examples like amici boni or discipulam laetam. First students said that their endings matched up. We stared at the chart some more and talked about what that meant. We finally teased out the concepts of CASE, NUMBER & GENDER. It was a good discussion and helped them to see for themselves.

Anyway, afterwards we METAPHRASED noun/adjective pairs as a unit. By Latin 2 they will be metaphrasing whole participial phrases. That is, I gave them word pairs like the following: (These come from "Rufilla" p 30--the story they were going to be reading later on.)

The metaphrasing sentence only has NOM DAT ACC VERB => Someone verbed something to someone. (That is, we haven't learned genitives and thus they aren't an option.)

1) optimum maritum
2) duae ornatrices
3) multas amicas
4) matronae Romanae (2 ways)

And they would write:
1) Someone verbed the best husband to someone.
2) The 2 hairdressers verbed something to someone.
3) Someone verbed many girlfriends.
4) The Roman ladies verbed something to someone.
OR Someone verbed something to the Roman lady.

We discussed 2 and 4 at length. With #2 we talked about 1st and 3rd declension words being able to go together, that most importantly they must line up in the same column (for case). With #4 we discussed the importance of context and word order. Yes, in the future it will change and be more pliable, but it will NEVER be random (and anyone who thinks that really doesn't understand Latin literature). Currently the patterns we are seeing with Datives are as an indirect object, with special verbs like credit and favet, and most recently with phrases like difficile est mihi (dative) + infinitive.

Such warm-ups (followed by vocab drill) get their brains ready for the story we will b reading.

Anyway, I've been working on writing this on and off (more off than on) for several days, and since it's just a blog I'm going to let it ramble. The main point I want to make is that repetition, even if you are sure they should know their endings or whatever you are working on, really helps. Some students just don't get how important learning endings are until very late in the year. Keep cycling back and adding on. Students give up 2nd semester because they feel like there's no way to catch up and learn what they were supposed to have gotten by now. If you can keep reviewing in manner that covers the old stuff while adding the new, it becomes far more doable.

Metaphrasing in the simplistic way I do it (I know that University of Michigan folks get into more detail) has improved my own reading dramatically over the last few years. It's one of my favorite tools in my toolbox, and it is really very helpful in getting students to understand structure without resorting to grammatical terminology every time (like direct object vs indirect object, etc).

More thoughts on Latin 2 and 3 next, I think.

The following is from a post I made to the Latinteach list in response to someone saying they were thinking of only making students learn the 2nd and 3rd pp only. I kind of waffled on a bit, as usual, but that's what I do.

***
>1. The first principal part is what they will need to look up a verb in a dictionary.
>2. With irregular verbs, you can't always predict the first principal part from the infinitive. "Ire" -- io?
>3. If they don't learn the fourth principal part, how are they going to recognize it when it is used adjectivally, or in an ablative absolute; and how are they going to read the perfect/pluperfect/future perfect passive? Perfect participles are only predictable in the first conjugation.

I don't teach all the principal parts right away with CLC, but once the infinitive is learned, then I do require the first 3 and expose them to the fourth and eventually require the fourth. 

But with that said, I may switch to teaching all four once I get to the infinitives, esp now that I'm teaching high school and my pace is doubled. 

I do agree with the above--students need the first form for dictionary work, whenever they do that. And in fact, they'll eventually need all the forms in great measure because of how Latin has traditionally been taught and organized in grammars and references. And that's fine. 

I don't, for instance, teach full declensions until all have been met, but I also do NOT leave the students with nothing to "hang" endings on. I have the model sentences that I use that have been discussed in the past. (For more on that, search the archives or my blog or wait for another posting on it.) I do not leave students trying to organize and sort endings on their own. They need help with organizations. 

Likewise, I don't just say "memorize the perfects" before we do principal parts (since they start appearing by stage 6) but give them a mnemonic device to recognize them (vLsux-ed; L=long vowel).
But eventually, I do noun charts and principal parts as their knowledge of how the language works expands. I show them that if they master one chart (basic endings of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd) that they can handily deal with pronouns and other such things. 

With verbs on quizzes I will ask for the 1st 3 principal parts for the first few stages in dealing with infinitives and such, but once participles are being snuck into the stories more as we near stage 20, I do require 4th principal parts as well, and certainly by that time they have been taught how to use a dictionary and look up principal parts as needed--or, more likely,--how to think backwards to guess what the probable 1st principal part is. 

But here's something else to consider: just because whatever text you use doesn't introduce a form at a certain time doesn't mean you shouldn't teach it. However, making students memorize something without USING IT in some form or fashion means they probably won't retain it. This is where ORAL LATIN comes in handy, as well as written instructions that you could put on the board or on your agenda. At least, if nothing else, tie derivatives to it. Just SUPPORT what you teach and require. 

Anytime I decide I want to rock the boat and do things my own way and NOT the way of the book, I ask myself: 1) is it necessary now? 2) when it is necessary, will it be a problem to teach then or would it be better if they saw it now? and 3) IF THE STUDENTS LEAVE ME and go to another teacher, will they be able to cope? That is, I used to NOT teach full declensions in Unit 2 but just did my funky sentences, but the end result was that they weren't fully prepared to deal with how their new teacher at the high school taught. So was I being fair to them by teaching them in my own way? I now use the Endless Noun Ending song once all the cases are met. They hate learning it at first and having the endings in an abstract chart really bothers some students, so I also still use my model sentences. They like those because they tie morphology to meaning directly in the context of a sentence--the bare charts do not.

I know that if students leave me they may end up with teachers that want them to be able to decline or conjugate anything. Most of my students should be able to do those things, but they are not the focus of my teaching. I focus on building reading skills and tying morphology and vocab straight to the readings--not things to be learned in isolation. And while from time to time this year I pondered whether, especially with my Latin 2's and 3's using Ecce, I should do more work on forms and such, my students told me that actually they learned so much more from me than the previous teacher--and I can only guess that was because I was looking at the whole language and not just the pieces. It's not that I didn't require an understanding of endings; I just didn't require much in the way of composition. (Something I want to ponder this summer.)
***

For new/future teachers, such things may have never even been an issue for you, or you never considered not learning things the way you did learn them.

For instance, if you learned Latin via Wheelock's Latin (http://www.wheelockslatin.com), the whole idea that you *wouldn't* learn all the details of vocabulary probably never crossed your mind.  Surely being able to discern whether you had a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd declension noun and then to decline it is something *crucial* to the learning of Latin, esp at the beginning. Surely learning principal parts is also *crucial*.

Maybe.

I don't say to ignore them and let students *absorb* them.  But consider the number of people who always thought that Latin was way too difficult, too many endings to learn, too much to remember, too much to decode--and, ohmigosh, translating is the worst!  There are always students who say they'd rather just do transformational exercises and skip the readings.

BUT WE ARE TEACHING LATIN TO READ LATIN.  Yes, we are.  So consider what it is you really need to read Latin at particular levels.

Do you need to be able to fully decline a noun in order to read simple Latin?  To fully conjugate a verb?  3rd person is the most frequent verb ending in Latin texts--can't we just learn that first?  And, of course, the answer is yes.  Plenty of more modern courses--CLC, OLC, Ecce, and Oerberg's _Lingua Latina_.

The real question in my mind is do you know how to teach *reading*?  What do you do to support learning how to read Latin in word order, left to right?  Because let's face it: most anyone can do the rote memory work of learning declensions and vocabulary.  This is why so many Latin 1 classes are full to overflowing.  If that's what you  focus on, that part is easy.

But what happens to those kids who can't put it all together on their own?

Far easier, I think, to teach reading skills from day one when the sentences are short and easy.  Too easy to think it matters, really, but it does. You don't start lifting weights with the heaviest you can lift.  You have to build your strength.  THIS is where you learn WHY those endings are important. THIS is when you learn to SEE THEM and understand how to interpret them AS YOU SEE THEM.

It doesn't need to be a secret code, because if you do treat it that way, you will never have students who can pick up the pace and READ!  Otherwise they will just be slogging through X many lines at night, stressing, never feeling like they know the language.

Ok. That was me.

That was me...I was good at learning all the forms, all the details, etc, but no one taught me how to read. No one showed me the tools I needed to  practice to get better at reading, to get faster, to gain proficiency.

So I've really rambled on this one.  But it all goes back to this:  when you are a teacher and you are deciding what to teach and what not to teach--whether it's principal parts or declining or whatever--you must always have THE BIG PICTURE in mind.  What you decide for Latin 1--whether you are teaching high school or middle school--must include what you would want all of them to know for Latin 4.  You have to treat them ALL as if they will ALL go on.  You can't save critical things to teach later to just the bright kids--like accentuation and syllabification.  Those are skills that must be mastered BEFORE hitting Latin poetry.  AND they are skills needed for meeting ANY new text--you can't absorb a new word in context and fix it in your mind if you aren't even pronouncing it right.

In other words, you can't separate any of it from reading.  None.  READING is what ties it all together and should help shape your opinions and decisions.  

And that's enough of my rambling.

I was asked to participate in a survey on how we teachers continue to make Latin fun. For some reason, just the premise of the survey irritated me. Perhaps it's because I've come to see that too many level 1 Latin teachers have made their careers out of keeping Latin fun so their enrollments for level 1 are large--they must be large because their enrollments for Latin 3 and 4 are small.

Ok...that's sounding really crabby. I don't mean it to, but when I was CPL Chair (Committee for the Promotion of Latin) and getting stuff going with National Latin Teacher Recruitment Week, I was having to really think about WHY--*W*H*Y*--programs have problems building on the strength of Latin itself.

Is Latin really that hard? Or do we teach it in a way that weeds out anyone that isn't totally bright and can teach themselves more or less? Ok, still being a bit crabby, but I'm not talented with languages. I'm not fluent. I'm just your average nerdy disciplined student who has the ability to think creatively. I have to work at truly reading Latin, but NOW at least I know HOW to develop these skills. In fact, I told my students last Friday for NLTRW that my goal was to make them better at Latin than what I was.

ANYWAY, here's the survey:
***

> >>1. At what type of school do you teach?
> >>(public/private/parochial/cyber)

Public.


> >>2. Do you teach high school or middle school or both?
> What grades
> >>and/or age levels you teach?

Up until this year I taught at an inner city middle school. I am now in a growing town outside of Austin (TX) at a high school, though I think I will be split between high school and middle school next year.


> >>3. What textbook(s) do you use?

Cambridge Latin Course. I am finishing up the Latin 2's and 3's on Ecce Romani as well.


> >>4. Is the textbook geared for games and/or fun
> activities? Does your
> >>program come with ancillary activities on other media
> (e.g., CD, DVD,
> >>enrichment activities)?

There may well be activities available but I create my own to suit my own philosophical approach to teaching Latin and language acquisition.


> >>5. In general, what do you do in the classroom that
> enhances student
> >>enjoyment:
> >>a. decorate the room

Yes, I have a lot of posters, mainly those which I designed myself that are available through my shop at CaféPress called AnimaAltera (www.cafepress.com/animaaltera). These posters feature sites in Pompeii and Rome. I also have others that are downloadable that I created for NCLG that you can find at www.promotelatin.org.

> >>b. arrange desks

Occasionally, but not too often.

> >>c. give Latin names to students

Absolutely. And the names are used as well as bullas (on test/quiz days). I often can't remember the students' real names!

> >>d. Other

In Latin 1 currently (but not in Latin 2/3 which is split level and pressed for time anyway), we do the weather in Latin. I have rotating jobs and vaticinator/vaticinatrix is one of them. They have a prompt sheet (poster) and picture cards for the weather. The script goes something like this:

"salvete! vaticinator hodiernus sum. mihi nomen est Marcus." The audience then says, "salve, Marce! quod caelum est?" Marcus then replies, having flipped through the cards and found appropriate cards, "sol lucet et ventosum est." The audience repeats the terms. Then Marcus says, "gratias et valete!" and the audience replies "vale!"

We get to practice vocatives, among other things, by doing this and all names are learned. I need to revise what I do with this to include the day of the week, etc.

> >>6. What learning styles do you use that may increase
> student enjoyment
> >>and learning?

I do a wide variety of things--some visual, oral, audio, written, you name it. I'm big on oral, esp when supported with written (to look at) for those who need it. I read A LOT to my students--very dramatically. My captive audience.... I read and read again. I discuss what I do and why and try to build the idea that Latin is a language to be read and spoken, NOT deciphered. Each year I try to do more and more oral Latin in class--more questioning and discussing of the text in Latin, etc.


> >>7. What traditional games do you employ in your
> classroom to increase
> >>student enjoyment and learning (e.g., VINCO - Latin Bingo, popcorn,
> >>Latin Jeopardy, Periculum Latinum, tic-tac-toe)?

I have used flyswatter and will occasionally use calidum/frigidum (where I hide a toy dog and the students chant whatever (sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt, etc) either loudly or softly depending on how close I am to the dog. It's good for getting over the initial hump of troublesome conjugations. But I don't do a ton of games just to keep Latin fun.

> >>8. What games have you developed?

Playing Go Fish (I Piscatum) in Latin based on terminology from a Vives dialog and other research. We play entirely in Latin, working noun/adjective agreement; acc plurals; subj verb agreement, etc. The students think they are just getting a day off, so to speak, from reading Latin, but they are practicing many forms and building up their comfort levels in speaking Latin and expanding their abilities to express themselves outside of the set vocabulary of the game.

> >>9. Have you learned that certain games or activities
> lend themselves to
> >>certain grammatical or cultural topics? Please list and explain.

See above.


> >>10. Do you use crossword puzzles? If so, how do you create them?

Rarely. I'd rather my students actually do something active with the language. Now...if I made up the crosswords in Latin, that might be something else... Hmmm....anything that keeps them in the language would be good....

I do use Puzzlemaker from time to time (online) when I need puzzles, but usually that's for something with my own children at home.


> >>11. What technology do you use in planning and
> implementing lessons?

In PLANNING? I sometimes use PowerPoint, esp for the Latin 3's, for warm-ups, but I don't have access to a projector so I rarely use PowerPoint for the whole class. I use it for warm-ups for Latin 3 because there are only 8 of them and I can build in the answers after they do whatever has been set for them.


> >>12. Do you use www.quia.com, www.linguazone.com, or
> other websites for
> >>planning and implementing lessons? Which ones and how?

Quia. Extensively. Test prep, mainly. www.quia.com/pages/drippinglatin1a.html, www.quia.com/pages/drippinglatin1b.html, www.quia.com/pages/drippinglatin2.html, www.quia.com/pages/drippinglatin3.html.

I use these because I am trying to support learning the language IN THE CONTEXT OF A SENTENCE. Students get immediate, one-on-one feedback, and if my comments in the feedback section isn't enough for them, I am roaming around the room monitoring progress and helping to understand certain concepts--subj/verb agreement, for instance, or when the dative is used, etc.


> >>13. Do you use index cards for games or in an interesting way?

I often drill vocab with large flashcards. Occasionally we play Build-A-Sentence which uses flashcards. I got this from Joe Davenport. It is a structured composition game that is team based. You have two sets of cards that have the same words. For instance, you'd have these:

Ancilla/ancillam (front/back)
Servus/servum
Canis/canem
Est
Portat
Pulsat

Teams go up and you call out an English sentence: The slavegirl carries the dog. The dog hits the slave. The slavegirl is a dog. Etc. The first group to hold up the correct cards wins a point. We freeze, discuss what's right with the one group and what's wrong with the other group. After playing for about 8 sentences, I then put the same sentences on the overhead for students to translate into Latin correctly individually. It's a good way to see who's getting certain concepts and who isn't.


> >>14. Please comment if you have any engaging strategies
> in teaching the
> >>following:
> >>
> >>a. Pictures/drawings/Digital Photos
> >>b. Cultural Projects
> >>c. Festivals (Saturnalia, Lupercalia, Lemuria, Ides of
> March, etc)
> >>d. Philadelphia Classical Society project
> >>e. National Latin Exam
> >>f. National Myth Exam or Medusa Mythology Exam
> >>g. Inspiration
> >>h. Vocabulary
> >>i. Derivatives
> >>j. Movies and or videos
> >>k. Pop Culture
> >>l. Special phrases and mnemonics- “Ham and 5 eggs,” “PAIN” words

Because the perfect tense conjugation is tricky, I use the following song to the tune of 3 Blind Mice:

i, isti, it; i, isti, it
imus, istis, erunt; imus, istis, erunt
You take the 3rd principal part
Drop the i and then you add
i, isti, it, imus, istis, erunt

For regular ending I use most must isn't (m/o, s, t; mus, tis, nt).

I have developed my own model sentences for use with Cambridge until all cases are met:
ancilla puellae statuam dat.
ancillae puellis statuas dant.
dominus servo anulum dabat.
domini servis anulos dabant.
mater* patri infantem dedit.
matres patribus infantes dederunt.

I use these because it keeps the endings in context (declining is artificial) and gives the students something to hang the endings on. They work well. I add on phrases for the genitive and ablative later on, and then eventually teach the noun ending song that's at Able Media. You can't get away from how charts are organized. But more important than being able to decline is being able to UNDERSTAND. Plenty of adults can still decline a noun and tell you about derivatives, but they can't read Latin. I want my students to be able to read Latin first and foremost.


> >>m. Noun and verb endings
> >>n. Other: _______________ (list and explain)

I try to limit my game playing to something that's tied directly with using the language. I don’t do as much as I'd like--partially because of time constraints, partially because of administrivia, etc. But I don't want to play games that only work knowledge level learning. Too many teachers of level 1 Latin do nothing but knowledge level work--memorize this chart, etc--and then hope that students will be bright enough to put it all together. I try to do things that work on the other skills on Blooms Taxonomy, that build comprehension and synthesis and analysis. I try to build in the steps in between--and it's not all games. I do a fair amount of metaphrasing for warm-ups. I might give them a set of nouns in different cases which they have to metaphrase like this:

Ancillam> Someone verbed the slavegirl.
Cani> Someone verbed something to/for the dog.
Hospites> The guests verbed something OR Someone verbed the guests.

I might provide an entire sentence to be metaphrased, esp if it is one that most people messed up somehow on an assignment or test:

(Pulling a sentence at random from the nearest book:)
Subito feles sacra, quam Clemens mulcere solebat, e templo exiit.

Here are the steps they would take (mind you, this is just for a warm-up; we wouldn’t do this for every sentence!!)

Suddenly someone verbed something.
Suddenly the cat verbed someone OR the cats verbed someone OR someone verbed the cats
Suddenly the sacred cat verbed someone (demonstrates how adjectives can disambiguate nouns)
Suddenly the sacred cat, which someone verbed, verbed something.
Suddenly the sacred cat, which Clemens verbed, verbed something.
Suddenly the sacred cat, which Clemens verbed to pet, (and we now easily EXPECT solebat--thus are reading with expectation, as any good reader should), verbed something.
Suddenly the sacred cat, which Clemens was accustomed to pet, verbed something.
Suddenly the sacred cat, which Clemens was accustomed to pet, verbed from the temple.
Suddenly the sacred cat, which Clemens was accustomed to pet, left from the temple.

NOW, my point is that if you are a dynamic teacher, and you read with lots of dramatics, and get your students to read with lots of dramatics, AND you give them the tools to read in word order so that long sentences do not freak them out, then you have made Latin fun WITHOUT ALL THE GAMES.

Yes, it's important to have fun in Latin. But frankly, winning a game isn't nearly as much fun or deeply satisfying as TOTALLY understanding the Latin or being able to speak and read it. My proudest moment last year was during my all Latin week. I was still teaching at an inner city middle school, didn't have a lot of high achievers, but one day we sat in a big circle took turns reading outloud from the beginning of CLC Unit 1. You read as much or as little as you wanted (at least one sentence) then pointed to your neighbor. I had fun reading when it was my turn, and after having read a whole story (that was a favorite of mine), other students realized they could do that too. One squirrelly boy--bright but not a great student--read an entire story (I think about the thief in stage 6) so well and so dramatically and with such personal enjoyment that I went home knowing I had done my job well after all. (It had been a tough year--gangs, discipline issues at school, and being terminated because I spoke up against what the new administration was not doing.)

Fun and games? They have their place. Have your students read outloud and read well--now that's fun.
There was a discussion going on the Cambridge list as a member posted a concern with a sudden realization that students really didn't seem to know their endings like they should.

Someone else mentioned my model sentences, so I chimed in with the following:

***

I use model sentences (which can be found at my blog site below or go to
http://ginlindzey.livejournal.com/#entry_30945) starting with stage 9.
(Actually, I do use a version in stage 8.) I found early on that students who are bright can be very intuitive with CLC and get the gist of most any story (which are good stories and fun to read) even if weak on endings. But there comes a point, a critical mass, where if they haven't consolidated endings in one form or fashion, it suddenly becomes too hard for them, or so they say.

So staring in Stage 9, we chant the sentences at the beginning of class and sometimes subsitute other words into them, etc, and we definitely metaphrase, esp for warm-ups. I feel this makes them take notice of the endings. So I might list random words for the warm-up like:

servo
amicos
domini

To metaphrase, students must use this formula: Someone verbed something to someone.

Therefore...
Someone verbed something to the slave.
Someone verbed the friends (to someone).
The masters verbed something to someone.

When we read stories, and they stumble on a sentence, I make them start from the first word and metaphrase until they have a complete sentence. For instance, we were reading Marcus et Quartus today. There was a sentence which read, I believe, Quartus Sullae murum ostendit.

The student started with, "Quartus and Sulla..." and I stopped her. She was wildly guessing, just tossing words together. (I have too many like that this year.) I slowed her down. I put the model sentences on the overhead and said, "Which word is Quartus like?"
"dominus."
"Which word is Sullae like?"
"puellae. Oh. So Quartus verbed something to Sulla."
"and murum?"
"Quartus verbed the wall to Sulla."
"and ostendit?"
"Quartus showed the wall to Sulla."

They can do this if I slow them down. (My students aren't the most academically prepared so we have to work a lot harded to make connections, I
find....)

Remember, rote memorization (like learning endings) is a low level cognitive skill. Application and synthesis are higher level skills. Some kids immediately see all the bits and pieces and put them together, others need help making the connections, and I feel my sentences have been helpful. If we don't help them to make those connections, we will not get enough students to the next level. There's no reason why we shouldn't have full level 3 and level 4 classes if we find ways to help students make connections.

Now, with my 8th graders, we have just finished stage 18 in the 4th edition text (new to me this year). There are some things I wish I did better, others I was pleased with. For one, the addition of the neuters AND 4th and 5th declension forced me to choose this as my chapter for weaning students onto a noun ending chart. Let's face it, every grammar text will use it for organizing information and they need to at least understand what it's about. So we learned the noun-ending song from the Able Media website. Student can choose to use the chart or their model sentences. Reproduction of either on a test or quiz earns extra credit points. They don't have to put either, but I encourage it not for the extra credit points, but to make sure that they can refer to it if they need it when reading (or metaphrasing).

I might add that I do vocabulary quizzes in context, which some have said requires too much grammar. To me, it is a way to force students, before the major test, to pay attention to the details. amIcO is not the same as amIcOs, and if they don't include a "to" or "for" if amIcO is the underlined word in the sentenc, then the word is half wrong. They get practice quizzes (stole that idea from an ACL workshop), so they can preview what's coming up on the quiz. There's no surpise, and I only use sentences that appear in stories they have just read. So in an ideal world, where they are rereading stories, everything is familiar on the quizzes.

Here's the thing, if you look at the teacher's guide for the 4th edition (which I have been doing because of writing curriculum stuff for our district), it even tells you that in stage 18 and beyond it's starting to offer sentences that vary greatly in word order. Yes, the word order is very predictable at first in order to get you used to the endings. By stage 18, students should be consolidating endings, and if they've been taught metaphrasing, a sentences with a strange word order will not be too overwhelming if they slow down and take it one word at a time, in word order.

So, my point was I wouldn't necessarily cram the chanting of noun ending charts down them, but set up some model sentences (mine? Yours? Whatever!), and get them thinking in terms of a framework. Walk them through it, slow them down, help them make connections. They probably know most of their endings--they just are shaking on the connections.

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But let me add a couple more thoughts about endings. There have been some teachers who have basically let the mastering and understanding of endings "weed out" their courses. This, of course, only left the best and the brightest for advanced level coursework, which usually suited teachers just fine. With one exception--the smaller advanced classes usually had to meet during another class. So on the one hand the teacher was fine with weeding out those that cannot make connections on their own, and on the other hand complaining about small class sizes.

Seems to me that we must--MUST--treat every class of beginners as if EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM will be in AP Latin one day, and that you thus MUST find a way to help them learn how to connect with endings and create meaning. To not do this is to cripple your own program.

If we want Latin to thrive and not just survive in this new century, we truly must rethink our approach to teaching.