Pat’s Polemics

Usually I blog on this topic after I’ve done something and I report on it. But I have been using a “Conversation profile” guide for (Continue Reading)

My students are pushing through, reading a story a day. I have slowed down with my second year students because it is clear they have (Continue Reading)

My students are pushing through, reading a story a day. I have slowed down with my second year students because it is clear they have (Continue Reading)

I had my first year students take a section of the story (Caerimonia) and act it out, drafting students outside their group if necessary. It (Continue Reading)

Recently I took a story and had students get into groups to which I assigned a section of the story. They then had to explain (Continue Reading)

My granddaughter, 8, was asking about the music coming from over the backyard fence. She at first said, ’the music next door’, then, realizing that (Continue Reading)

Since my name is Patrick and we just took over the care of my grandsons’ snake and I work in a Catholic school with lots (Continue Reading)

Next week we present our fairly tales. This week has been revealing b/c I can see how well students can produce. Production is a questionable (Continue Reading)

March is a great month for Latin teachers because everyone knows about the Ides of March and since we do dates in Latin every day, (Continue Reading)

I just talk to the students about the story. Today I read a story out loud and asked one student to stop every time she (Continue Reading)

On Monday the first moves toward a systematic approach to each story was begun. A new story was chosen and students were asked to pull (Continue Reading)

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 (Continue Reading)

Yesterday I gave out a pre-test consisting of pictures pasted onto regular paper. They were scenes we had covered in our readings: certain sites like (Continue Reading)

Today I went over a list of verb types in my second and third year classes. The second year class worked at figuring out what (Continue Reading)

To start the conversation over the stories in the most basic way, I decided on questions. Read the story out loud to them, then go (Continue Reading)

This week I focused on talking about the stories we read. It’s not all questions; I just do a kind of resume but ask questions (Continue Reading)

In my third year class, one story we read last week depicted a procession. There was a lot of detail, number of types of people, (Continue Reading)

At last my fifth hour has a classroom…… sort of. We got a computer room but it’s nice and cool (104 with humidity the last (Continue Reading)

Today is the second day students are back. Successes: first year enrollment in Latin up by almost 100%. combined three/four class acquired an eighth member. (Continue Reading)

Right now I’m going through picture files in preparation for matching pictures to vocab in CLC stories. In sorting and cataloguing them, interesting semantic issues (Continue Reading)

My four year old grandson was watching a cartoon whose content was decidedly teenage, dating and so forth. At one point he laughed and I (Continue Reading)

My 4 year old grandson asks, “Where you are?” Just now, he asked it of his 7 year old brother. So after his brother answered (Continue Reading)

I haven’t posted my lessons for a while and will back up and do so soon. Today we had another short-period day (3 this week! (Continue Reading)