My IIs have been finishing up Petronius' versipellis story - we divided it into three chapters. We've done a lot of prereading activities (micrologues, dictations, vocab activities, listen and draw, etc), and now they're ready to sit down and read the text. They voted to do this in groups.
So here's how we did it:
Students choose, or are put in, groups of three - whatever works for your particular bunch. Some of my classes self-group well, and others...less so. :) You know how it goes.
They designate person A, B, and C (or if you're my kids, rock/paper/scissors, servus/miles/melissa, anas/ananas/pudor...whatever works for y'all...). I project the first sentence of the text, with some questions following, on a PowerPoint slide. For example:
Melissa mea: "Lupus," inquit, "villam intravit et, petens omnia pecora tamquam lanius, sanguinem illis misit."
Quis fabulam narrat?
Quomodo lupus pecora petivit?
Quis sanguinem misit?
Cuius sanguis missus est?
Person A reads the sentence. Person B asks a question - this can be one of my questions I've projected, or they can come up with their own question. Person C answers the question.
They turn their attention to me again, and we walk through the sentence so everyone's on the same page, and we share questions and answers.
I project sentence two, also with questions. Now they switch roles: B reads the sentence, C asks, A answers. It goes like this in circuitu until they have finished reading the text.
This works well with short texts, or you can provide them with their own copy of the text with questions written in so that groups can go at their own pace instead of turning back to the class each time.
It forces the kids to stop after every sentence to really process what's going on; it scaffolds the questions for them so they don't have to formulate their own, but they can if they wish; and it asks them to focus on each thing that happens so they don't get lost in the middle, which can easily happen when they're encountering a new text. Let me know if it works for you, and what changes you make!
