Using language classes to teach other ideas

Every year for the last six years, I've sat down with my twos and threes and asked what they want to study curricularly the following year. Then I spend the summer putting together that curriculum. This year, for the first time, a student suggested the American Civil War. It didn't get voted for, so that won't be part of our curriculum next year, but it did spark a really interesting conversation about the things that are reasonable to learn in a Latin class.

The answer is: anything. It's a language, so we can talk about anything we want to. In the last year, we've done science experiments and hypotheses (Celsus proposes a lot of cures for a lot of things, so we hypothesized what they would actually do, and then we tried them all and kept notes on our experiments, comparisons, etc.), math (if we know how many people are in a contubernium and century, etc., can we figure out how many people are in a cohort?), history, reading, and art. I try very hard to touch on all the school subjects as often as I can.

Materials

Small update:

If you check the materials section, you'll see that the three existing gorgeous chapters of Hobbitus Ille, by Anthony Gibbins, are there. You should also go check out Legonium, also one of Anthony's masterpieces, with its sheltered vocab, great storylines, and beautiful pictures.

If you are NOT currently a member of the Teaching Latin for Acquisition facebook group, I highly recommend it. The beautiful Ellie Arnold (Helena) is administrating a database of an incredible number of readings and activities for CI Latin teachers.

Duck Duck Goose

We started out with anas anas anser.
By the end of the game, in various classes, we had anus anus ananas, anas anas ananas, and my favorite: ananas ananas pudor.

We played duck duck goose much like you do, with one twist - the student defending their seat had to answer a question. The students chased each other around the circle, and the first student to sit down (or to tag the other student) had to answer a question, Latine, in order to keep the seat. If they got it WRONG, the other student got to answer the question and could steal the seat. If BOTH got it wrong, the original student sat in the middle, and the other student had to duck-duck-goose everyone. It was simple, low-prep, and hilarious. I highly recommend it.

QR scavenger hunt

I read the excellent Keith Toda's version of this and was inspired to try my own. Essentially, you create QR codes with information and clues encoded in them, paste them up around the school, and empower the kids to use a QR reader or snapchat (which has one in its camera function!) to go on a scavenger hunt for the information.

I wanted them to do a review over theater information, but I didn't want to just play a review game - I also wanted them getting input. So I typed up a short text and used this QR code generator to create each of my codes. I created an A track, a B track, and a C track for each group by dividing each sentence into three fragments (see below).

Reading pictionary

The kids love pictionary, and I like finding excuses to get them to read and reread without making it too obvious that that's what I'm doing. :)

Something I like to do as a result:

I divide the class into three teams and ask for one volunteer from each team. Those three volunteers sit at the front of the room with their backs to the board, and the rest of my students get a mini-whiteboard and marker. But instead of the traditional 'now everyone draw a picture of the word I'm about to write,' those three get a copy of a story they know well instead.

A rereading game

Martina Bex created this gorgeous game called es posibile. I did (almost) nothing but translate it into Latin, beginning with fierine potest? ludus legendi.

The rules are pretty simple: Kid A draws a card, which has a statement on it. The student has to read the statement aloud, and then determine whether it's possible based on the text. If the sentence is possible, the kid moves forward; if not, backward. Rinse and repeat with kid B.

Designing a Unit Around Culture

Last summer, a friend of mine said something that really stuck with me. He told me that language is culture, and that we have to examine our reasons for teaching kids certain cultural things. Do we just want them to have the information? If so, just tell them. But if we want them to be able to discuss that information, they have to have it in the target language. So with that in mind, I wanted to teach theater this year, and I wanted to do it in the target language.

So I designed an entire unit around theater. One of the dangerous parts of topical units is we teach a bunch of specialized vocabulary (like greaves?!) that never gets used again. So when I do this, I try to pick vocabulary to focus on that I think is going to be useful universally. When we did magic, we acquired 'sermone secreto' and "pallent superi," each of which phrases was present in the reading, but has been otherwise useful for communicating. In medicine, we learned 'iuvamen vitae' and 'ex consuetudine.' While it's true that we also talked about livers and some random measurements, those have not been the major vocabulary focuses - the culture-specific words have become icing words, more or less.