Making Quizlet sets for selections of ancient literature

Students like using quizlet to study vocabulary, and it is well suited to that task. It is an online flashcard system that also has other things (e.g. quizzes and games) to help students learn the words. I've been using quizlet sets as part of weekly review activities to help students remember all the vocabulary that …

“Reader, Come Home” by Maryanne Wolf

While on a recent road trip, I listened to Reader, Come Home by Maryanne Wolf. First of all, I'm generally not one for audiobooks, and this book should definitely be read instead of heard, but the book is thought-provoking and fascinating... and the audiobook format helped prove some of Wolf's points. Neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf draws …

What is the purpose of this worksheet?

Last year, a student asked me for help with his ability to memorize vocabulary and understand Latin. I had some ideas but answers were not necessarily straightforward because of the different ways his brain works. This lead me to read Daniel Franklin's Helping Your Child with Language-Based Learning Disabilities: Strategies to Succeed in School & …

Dictogloss and English-to-Latin Translations

In graduate school, when I taught Intensive Latin, I would occasionally ask students to translate sentences from English to Latin. Invariably, I would hear moaning. This reaction stuck with me and continues to be the reaction I get to asking students to complete this task, which admittedly is more taxing than translating Latin to English, …

On the teaching of Grammar

During the 2020-2021 school year, Juniors and Seniors—all of whom had started with no Latin knowledge in 7th or 9th grade—both those who had struggled with Latin and others who had not—created great translations of passages from Caesar and Ovid. This past school year, I explained to several classes that we use a Grammar-Translation method …

SimOppidum

As a child of the 90s, I spent a lot of time playing SimCity as I grew up, and I played Civilization 3 and Rome: Total War in high school. Elements of these games made me think differently about various aspects of life and history, and I distinctly remember talking to students about Rome: Total …

Processing Feedback

This year, as part of the professional development efforts at our school, we read the book Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. Stone and Heen distinguish between three different types of feedback: Appreciation. This focuses on the human connection between the person providing …

Caring for ourselves and our students

We are in the midst of another Pandemic School Year, with all the complications that brings. While last year was fairly straightforward and policies were pretty constant, everything seems to be changing throughout this year: mask policies and recommendations, quarantining students and subsequent online learning, and social and mental health challenges from all of this …

Mnemonic for translating imperfect and future

Students like to remember that the imperfect tense is a past tense and that the future tense happens in the future, but they struggle to remember to translate the tenses according to their aspects. They just want to translate amabam as "I loved" and not the more proper "I was loving" or "I used to …

Negotiating with Upperclassmen

Now that my students have taken their exams and the grading process has begun, I can start catching up on some of the articles and books that I haven't quite had the time, energy, or motivation to read during this long, challenging school year. I just read this Edutopia article: "How to Negotiate Due Dates …