Who drives your classes?

My recent silence in the blogosphere is a reflection of moving to a new school and attempting to shift my pedagogical mindset.  I will be starting, this fall, at the Episcopal School of Jacksonville, which has a great reputation and many qualities that encourage a great educational experience. It also has several qualities, like easy …

Rules for Discussion

While researching for my recent post about politics in the classroom, I came across this excellent quotation: "If children become accustomed to discussing their differences in a rational way in the primary years, they are more likely to accept it as normal in their adolescence. Citizenship education helps equip young people to deal with situations …

New Latin YouTube Video Series!

With a new job and a new semester, I thought it was time to give the blog a new look and let you know about a side project I've been (slowly) working on: a set of YouTube videos about Latin constructions!  Latintutorial is an excellent YouTube channel that helps students study morphology, but I was …

Coding and the Beginning Latin Learner

Recently, I read Chris Bartlo's article about how programming supports math students' abilities to be more precise, receive prompt feedback, accept and normalize the struggle of working, work collaboratively, and be more metacognitive. The article appealed to me because teaching Latin, like teaching math, is about teaching students a skill. One paragraph from the article seemed particularly appealing …

Latin, Greek, and English Vocabulary

A recent article in The Times, "Bit-sized Greek and Latin lessons boost reading and maths skills," praised a program in English schools for helping students who are struggling with English and with math improve and catch up to their peers.  The program uses Latin and Greek roots to help students pull apart English words so that …

Checklist for student papers

During a discussion of how to improve student writing, a colleague remarked that she gave her students a checklist for each paper and required them to complete it and attach it to their assignments. This checklist included all the formatting guidelines, like font size and margins, that students often forget (or fudge), and some of …

Uses of Latin Cases – Word Web

Students always struggle with remembering the various uses of each Latin case, even after/if you're able to convince them to pay attention to the uses of cases.  In my experience, they have the most trouble remembering the uses of the ablative and the genitive cases.  I have attempted various strategies to help students remember the …

Make Classics Matter

Tom Tulliver hated learning Latin from Mr. Stelling.  He hated memorizing conjugations and declensions, and he had no clue why it was useful for him.  Tom just wanted to play and learn things that would help him take over his father's business.  Tom was so distressed by Latin that he turned to prayer in order …

Transitioning from Textbook Latin to Ancient Latin: Cicero, In Catilinam 1

This semester, I had the pleasure of reading excerpts from Cicero's First Catilinarian Oration with my Intensive Latin class after we had finished going through the grammar in the textbook.  It was a great text to read because there are lots of materials available for it and because it is a great text to review Latin …

Grading translations

One of the things that I have found most difficult and puzzling about teaching is how to grade translations.  It is hard to balance objectivity and subjectivity.  Furthermore, at what level do you expect students to try to mimic the author's word order? How do you account for the translator's writing style? To what degree …