Another days of lesson plans

The last two days, we have gone over the two formats I gave them and then combined for analyzing a story. All classes read one story easy for the twos and threes and just right for the ones. The twos and threes each had their own second story at a higher level.

We sat in a circle (remember, there are 11 first year students and 11 third year and 14 second year) and I asked individuals to tell us about various elements of the story, e.g. setting, events, characters, title, emotions or tone, descriptions of both places and people, both physical and personal. This is all done in Latin with answers in English where some confusion existed and sometimes explanations in English from me where necessary. Interestingly, the second year kids were the most receptive to conducting the class in Latin, getting very excited over their successes in comprehension and knowing the answer.

The idea here, of course, is to get them away from thinking about Latin and to thinking about something else so that the Latin patterns will be laid down in their brains’ language receptors (or so I imagine it). Next week, we turn to geography of the ancient world; map work, names of areas used now only at higher reading levels e.g. Pannonia, Anatolia, etc.

I suspended our prayers this week but are coming along with our French prayer and will switch to Italian eventually. Their interest in learning how to make the sounds of the various languages is heartening, but I hope to intrigue them with comparisons of these Romance languages with their Latin parent. Language history and change is one of my favorite topics, one I know something about, and I enjoyed teaching them the Pater Noster in Latin, Old English, and Middle English last semester.

One thing I haven’t picked up again is their log of the class. I did it once this semester but haven’t seen the last 2 weeks as conducive to logging.

My school has a lot of activities which take students out of class. It’s frustrating but gives the school a cohesion you don’t see as much in large public schools.

By the end of the week, I’ll let you know how the test went and the response to the video.

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