That same second year class drove me nuts yesterday. There were two pairs of talkers and one math homework doer. Keep in mind, this class has only 11 students!
I couldn’t get my failure to engage them out of my mind.
The activity yesterday was one that engaged the other two classes (First and Third Years): going to the board and writing one fact about the theme chosen, usually a character. Between turns at the board, they did not pay attention to what other students were writing.
So today I combined my old Action Sheet with something I had already planned. It was to have pictures of various sites in the stories e.g. the forest, the baths, the villa, the forum, the courthouse, etc. and, staying in Latin the whole time, write about these places on the sheet next to the picture.
It went very well. However, I must say that the worst offender from yesterday happens to be in the study hall I monitor and today she came up twice with questions for Latin! So I wonder if some of my discontent was more just impatience with the restlessness of 15 year olds.