OWAT Story Scavenger Hunt: A thing you can do on sub days

I think I invented this activity, but I'm not sure. It's basically a gallery walk type thing that you can do the day after you do some One Word at a Time Stories. The best thing about it is that you can assign it as a sub plan and know the kids are still getting input. It also requires them to get up and move around the room, which is sometimes desirable. And it's personalized because it's kids' output! And if you're 6 months pregnant you can sit down for most of it!

Day 1: (15-20 minutes)

• Maybe you're there, maybe you're not. 
• Prep cards for OWAT. 
• Print out these worksheets... or don't. I made up these worksheets this past time because I got tired of repeating the directions, and also it makes it clear how many sentences there are supposed to be at the end. Oh, and unlike Keith, I never do this in groups of more than 2 people.
• Have kids do the activity. 
• Encourage them to use Latin words they know as much as possible. You want to keep the stories comprehensible for their level, so if you have to add a bunch of extra vocabulary it's a pain in the butt.
• Outside of class time, read them over and pick the easiest and frankly most coherent ones. 
• Type them out, correcting grammar as you go. 
• You might need to simplify the story or change things a bit.
• I recommend changing the story as little as possible because some kids get mad when you change their stories. 
• I don't keep the author names on the stories, but you can if you want.
• Number each story.
• Make Scavenger Hunt questions about them. 
• You can use this worksheet as a template, but sadly you're going to have to change the clues to fit the stories you get, of course.
• Definitely make them write down the sentence that gave them the answer or they will write random numbers.
• Adding the vocab is a new idea this time and I think it's a good one. I don't actually know how this went because I'm not at Day 3 yet :) Especially if you've used this to introduce newish vocab, they will need the help.
• Here are the stories that go with the above worksheet, for your reference. These aren't the best stories I've ever gotten but I wanted to use something recent. The more decent stories you get, the longer you can make the activity last. And the more input they'll get, which I'm sure is the more virtuous goal... but listen, I'm tired.
• Print out the stories out in BIG text.
• Use different colors of text or paper to differentiate between levels. On days I use this, I use it for all my levels.
• Pin/magnet the stories up around the room wherever you can.
• Try to spread them out and put them up a bit high because students will crowd around them and it can be hard for them to see.

Day 2: (15-20 minutes)

• Give the sub some instructions like these: 

1. Hand out One Word At a Time Scavenger Hunt worksheets. 
2. Remind them to put their names on the papers.
3. Go over instructions with students. They will not get credit for random answers.
4. Direct students’ attention to the stories pinned up around the room. Be sure students know that Latin I stories are in RED TEXT, and to ignore the other ones.
5. Students should individually follow the instructions and walk around the room looking for the stories that fit the descriptions on their worksheets.

Day 3 or whatever: (15ish minutes)

• Mark the papers at least for completion.
• Re-read the stories together. Project them, or if you have a small enough class, walk around the room together and choral read and/or choral translate them.
• Ask your scavenger hunt questions in TL or in L1, whatever works best for you. 
• Have kids correct their own papers as you go, if you want.
• If you want, collect the papers again & mark them for interpretive proficiency.

There. Your lesson plan for parts of 3 days. Surround it with more input on the same structures. 

Bonus question: This particular iteration of an OWAT Scavenger Hunt sequence was aimed at a particular text. Do you know which chapter/unit/story I was targeting? The winner gets gloria immortalis! (My kids never get concrete prizes. KLEOS ONLY!) 

Let's steal activities from SEI! Ping Pong Sentence Frames

I'm taking a very short SEI course on PD days at school. I'm actually finding it vaguely interesting and useful, which is nice! Here's a thing I just learned and then immediately turned around and used for Latin.

It was presented as one option for Step Six in this Seven Step model for vocabulary introduction, which is designed to take less than 3 minutes per word and be usable for any subject. The instructor didn't really give it a name but she did use the word "ping-pong" and it involved a sentence frame kinda thing so we'll go with that.

Ping Pong Sentence Frames

1. Teacher provides some kind of sentence frame. We were practicing with "transform," and she used the frame, "A __________ can transform into a __________."

2. Teacher sets a one-minute timer, and starts: "A caterpillar can transform into a butterfly."

3. Designated student gives their own version, "A tadpole can transform into a frog." Teacher & student continue, giving as many examples as possible in one minute.
"A bad student can transform into a good student."
"A bad teacher can transform into a good teacher."
"An ice cube can transform into a puddle."
"An egg can transform into a chicken."

etc. They don't really have to even be true, so long as they follow the pattern and make SOME kind of sense.

The next day, I tried it with my kids. I didn't time us (mistake- the urgency would have helped) and I didn't make it one versus one. Instead, I took answers from anyone who was ready. Some classes got into it more than others, but it totally got in reps and we had fun.
___________ contra _____________ bellum gerit.
Americans contra British bellum gerit.
Trump contra Hilary bellum gerit.
Japanese contra Americans bellum gerit.
America contra terrorism bellum gerit.
etc.

We also did some with servat: Superman Lois Lane servat. Spiderman "that ginger" servat. Batman his parents NON servat. Tom Brady Patriots servat. etc.

And some with vincit: Patriots Falcons vincit. Trump Hilary vincit. amor omnia vincit (okay, that was mine). etc.

It was a good way to kill a few minutes and get some nice contextual reps in of some new terms. All in all, totally worth adding to the toolbox.

I accidentally made a dictation compelling. This is my story.

So, dictation/dictatio. I love dictations because they are QUIET and I don't really have to grade them. They also really seem to help with spelling & listening, and they force the skimming kids to actually READ the Latin in front of them. Beautiful! But... the kids hate them. They're not especially comprehensible as input, especially if you're using new words. You have to use them s.p.a.r.i.n.g.l.y or else do them in more complex but totally awesome ways that I'd have to, like, prep for. I'm much too lazy for that (or alternatively, my brain is too full to learn any new activities at the moment).

The past two weeks I did two story listens. I liked doing them and the kids mostly liked doing them. They seemed to work pretty well for getting the vocab into their brains. They will be hella part of my rotation, which means it's all the more important that I not overdo them. This week I needed to do something else to do some kind of story about the gods. I decided to do a simplified version of the Cronos-baby-nomnoms story, because I think it's hilarious, and it's as good a place to start for the Olympians as anything else.

The way it played out in different classes... differed, depending on time and what other stuff I had to do with each class and all that. Some classes got straight out dictate ten sentences, then correct ten sentences, then translate & discuss ten sentences. Others got dictate one, correct one, then translate & discuss the whole thing at the end. Still others got dictate, correct, translate & discuss, repeat. (The latter is an idea I got from Chris Buczek, btw, who has a new blog and you should read it.)

Here are some things I did that made it work well.

1. The last order- dictate, correct, translate together & discuss- is definitely the best one. Why?

• Seeing the corrections on each sentence means kids build confidence as they go. Even if Iuppiter sounds like nonsense the first time, after they've seen it in writing once, it goes much easier. 
• The same thing builds comprehension as you go. For example, -que on the end of otherwise known words was upsetting and incomprehensible the first time they heard it, but once they'd seen it written and had it explained, the next five times were comprehensible input. 
• It breaks up the tedious listening & writing.
• It slows down the storytelling, which builds suspense, because they didn't get to find out what happened next until they'd heard & corrected another sentence.

2. Before we started, I brought out my big thing of colored pencils and said, "Come pick out a colored pencil to use for corrections." This tactic meant:

• they had to move their butts out of their seats to walk over to my colored pencils before we did a long, seated activity.
• they got to make a personal choice, even such an unimportant one as what color to use.
• they got to use fun colors, which tbqh is the only way I get through grading. It is juvenile, but it really does make life cheerier.

3. This part was by accident. Here's the dictatio in English. The unknown words are in brackets. The Latin is here in a variety of formats & tenses. 

1. Saturn is the [king] [of the gods], because he kills [his own] father.*
2. Rhea, sister and wife of Saturn, is the [queen] [of the gods].
3. Saturn and Rhea have many sons [and] daughters. (the "and" was a -que btw)
4. Saturn eats his sons [and] daughters because he [fears] [them].
5. Rhea [saves] one son.
6. [That] son, Jupiter, attacks his father.
7. Jupiter takes his brothers [and] sisters out of his father's stomach.
8. Jupiter [saves] his brothers [and] sisters.
9. Jupiter [wages] [war] [against] Saturn.
10. Jupiter puts Saturn in Tartarus.

Sentences 1, 2, 4, and 7 (and to a lesser extent, 6) contain shocking details: patricide,* incest, cannibalism, taking people out of someone else's stomach. Thus, they are the most compelling sentences. Since those sentences also contained mostly known vocab, they were also the most comprehensible. Thus this result:

Sentence 1: ":mild shock:"

Sentence 2: "What?" "Eww!" "Incest?!"

Sentence 4ish: ":gasp:" "I think I understand a lot of what's going on, but it's really weird."

Setence 7: "STOMACH?" (stomachus) "But they're dead, right? How can they be fine?"

Entirely by accident, I managed to pepper the dictatio with built in "hooks" to engage the kids in the story while they did the tedious work of writing down what I said. I am TOTALLY doing that on purpose next time!

* yes I know he didn't kill Uranus, but I forgot while I was writing this, and also they don't know the verb "to castrate" or "to defeat." I casually added the castration part in as we translated. 

One thing I can't account for is that several of my literally-does-nothing-in-every-class kids participated and did the dictatio. Like, all of it. Even when I didn't finish on day 1 so it was two days in a row to some extent. I DO NOT KNOW WHY. We're talking three out of four kids who never do ANYTHING, in different sections of Latin 1. The fourth one is usually asleep and he slept through this too. If you have any ideas why dictatio was the thing that worked for them, I'd love to know. Maybe because it's a "free hundred." But so are my bell ringer activities, basically, and these kids don't do those... It's a mystery. A beautiful mystery.

How to develop a brand new CI activity without even trying

Here is something that happened by accident one day..

1st class PQA: what do you make & bring to a party? qualem cibum facis et ad festam fers? K says salad. I ask her if there are vegetables in the salad. No. I ask if there is fruit. No. I ask if there is meat. No. I ask if there are sweets. No. I ask if she had anything in mind at all. No. Okay, I say, let's make a salad together then. What does K put in her salad everyone? A few ideas. Not much response.

2nd class: Let's make a salad. What do you want to put in it? One idea each. I write them on the board. A few ideas, then one kid says 'broken glass.' Okay, new rule, you can put something in OR take something out. visne aliquid imponere an extrahere? The world's worst salad thus forms and is fixed and forms anew. Someone chooses to remove shrimp rather than the broken glass. We get lots of reps of imponere and extrahere. After kids add things, others respond with "bene sapit!" or "male sapit!" Everyone is delighted. And LOUD.

3rd class, boy this would be easier if I had Latin terms for all the food oh hey VERBA cards what's up. I pick out cards with foods and a bunch of animals and also stuff like tears, paint, love, etc.: Also, we've been using the word for soup this week, so we make soup instead. We sit on the rugs. Everyone has four randomly dealt cards. Same deal. They make a terrible soup but seem fairly pleased with it.

4th class, smallest class, things go smoothly. Not much to say. They mostly make a pretty decent soup, except for the time when someone puts in a heart, and the next person puts in love, and then the third person takes out love (but leaves the heart...).

5th class, my largest & most troublesome class. Not as much listening going on, but even the kid who literally never does anything says imponere in Latin when I ask him visne aliquid imponere an extrahere? and then he adds some batteries. I call that a win.

You can't plan this stuff. Thanks, K, for not having a plan for your salad.

Getting teenagers interested in conjugation

Yesterday I was absent and the sub was-- well. I was absent. Anyway, so my Latin 3 class were apparently all on their phones. The principal walked into the room. One of my students whipped her phone away, and began loudly singing, PORTO, PORTAS, PORTAT and the entire class sung along, through all four conjugations, in sync. Although I don't know if he fell for it as them NOT being on their phones, I bet it was funny to witness. They do, for the record, know what they're saying, too- it's not just rote. Why am I telling you this? Because sometimes (a lot actually) I break the rules and do non-CI stuff. This technique for dealing with verb endings is one of my favorite things, and I strongly recommend it so long as you're willing to put away that pesky dignity and have fun with your kids.

Actually acquiring endings enough to use them for output is probably one of the hardest things we try to achieve through CI. CI-wise, I make an effort to use the other forms and clarify who the subject is by pointing at myself, at "you", at "y'all" etc. I'll still point at "portat - carries" (or better portare - to carry") on the board even as I say porto and point to myself, and the meaning gets through. TBQH, the kids don't really "hear" the endings for the most part anyway, especially -t vs -nt, so doing this doesn't confuse them. If you're having trouble fitting non-third person singular entries into your CI, it helps to make sure your stories, whether written or acted out,  have dialogue. Circling by subbing in multiple subjects also helps for plurals. Once they've heard the other endings some, I also use them in written stories and usually gloss them.

Then when they've heard the different endings a lot, I take a page out of my non-CI background and I teach them the present tense active indicative charts for all four conjugations. nefas! 

Now, calm down. I don't give chart quizzes (although I've done it before and I'm not against it really as a just for fun, make up until you get it perfect type grade), and I don't say "and this is first person present active indicative of the third conjugation, characterized by the null vowel sound which results in..." [I'm too lazy to find a picture of Ben Stein but imagine him doing his thing here]

What I do is I teach them a song, and we sing it and practice it with hand motions, and they (mostly) LOVE it. I do it partly because they love it. The other reason I do it is because now they have the endings in their brains for reference if they're confused, and they recognize that amo and amatis are "the same word" even though they look different. This is not CI. Charts in themselves are incomprehensible. It is, however, engaging, brain-sticky, and many students find it helpful and fun. The tune is the Mexican Hat Dance and the "words" are:

Takeaways from Express Fluency: Latin Teacher Training with Justin Slocum Bailey

Over the past two days I was fortunate enough to attend a historic event: the first iFLT-style teacher training conducted in Latin. iFLT style means that we teachers observed while an experienced TPRS instructor taught a class made up of real language learners who didn’t know Latin- in this case, mostly adults, but usually I believe it’s school age children. Express Fluency, run by Elissa McLean, was the sponsor. Elissa herself was one of the Latin students, which I really appreciated as an observer. It was a lot of fun to watch her learn and get excited enough to use Latin with us during breaks! I hope in the future I’ll have time / energy to take Spanish or something from Express Fluency, since it’s local-ish to me and affordable (the credits were INCREDIBLY, pardon the pun, affordable, too: $62 each! what!). I also got the chance to briefly meet Laurie Clarcq, the co-inventor of Embedded Reading, who is charming and humble and full of great ideas.

You can find information about the detailed schedule here, but basically the format was this: over two days, there were nine hours of Latin TPRS and general CI-oriented instruction. We teachers sat behind the class and observed what the instructor did. In the time before and after the Latin class each day, we discussed with the instructor and each other what we’d seen and had opportunities to ask questions and discuss how TPRS works in the real classroom.

The instructor was this guy Justin Slocum Bailey, who came all the way from Michigan to Brattleboro, VT to educate us. If you’ve spent any time with him or his website, you know how lucky we were. If you haven’t, I am excited to introduce you.

Okay, so down to the actual stuff I saw. I’m not going to cover TPRS basics too much because there’s a lot out there already on circling etc. This entry is more specific ways I saw Justin using these techniques very effectively, or just things that I particularly enjoyed.

A quick disclaimer: these are my impressions of what Justin was doing. I can’t speak for his actual motivations or thought process. I’d like to think I’m accurate, but definitely don’t judge Justin solely on how I describe him here.

Spoken Latin in the classroom

The core tenet of CI is that kids need comprehensible input to acquire language-- a LOT of it. As Latin teachers we traditionally only provide input in written form, and it's rarely if ever actually comprehensible. So how can we deliver more input? By speaking Latin... a LOT. Terrifying! Right?

Well, yes. It's hard. But we've got to do it. I'm going to say right now that I'm really very weak. We've done classroom commands and stuff but I hardly ever use them. We do attendance in Latin now, but that's limited to "adestne Marcus?" "adsum." etc. When I'm doing a story or PQA, I speak Latin, but I pretty regularly break into English, and very few of the kids use Latin beyond sic, non, and adsum. One of my goals for next year* is to really push the spoken Latin and use it whenever possible.

Oh wait there's the rub. "Use it whenever possible." There are two huge constraints on this before we even worry about the kids' use of English. The first is the teacher's ability to speak, and the second is the kids' ability to understand.

As Latin teachers, we are usually pretty horrible at output. Most of us never even take prose comp courses, and forget about speaking practice. I posted previously about how to improve your spoken Latin (tl;dr: the answer is get more comprehensible input yourself!).

What about ensuring that the kids can understand you? You can read Cicero to them all day and they won't acquire a damn thing. You have to make sure that the input you provide is truly comprehensible. How do we do that? More under the cut.

Pattern Sentence Scramble Game

This game is the one I mentioned several posts ago, here. When I say "pattern sentence" below, I mean the kind of sentences I described in that post. This is a game you can play without doing that method of teaching declensions, too, however.

Grammar-brained students find this laughably easy, although they'll still mix up the vocab order sometimes. I have a handful of students who do poorly with both text and listening, and this really works well for them. They felt very good about themselves, which isn't usually how they feel when we do grammar. Middle range students find it helpful, although somewhat boring because I haven't worked out how to make it competitive.

Purpose
Students practice composing English to Latin sentences with heavy scaffolding. Through this activity, they get a sense for how Latin uses endings to change meaning. The limited vocabulary and fixed syntax makes the importance of endings really clear. Once they're really good at this, you can make sentences that don't follow the exact pattern and reuse the same cards.

Rationale
Is this CI? No. It's not CI because it's not input. I tried to bear in mind the concept of comprehensibility, however, which is why all the heavy scaffolding. This really has no place in a truly "pure" CI classroom. That said...

The fixed syntactical order of the sentence removes the difficulty of figuring out which ending to use. Once the kids figure out that order, all they have to do is decide if a noun is singular or plural. The goal here is not for them to compose sentences by understanding the function of the cases; it's for them to understand the function of the cases by composing sentences.

The English on the back of the vocab cards and the case functions on the back of the ending cards are there for the same reason: this isn't an activity about showing what you've learned already. It's about having all the information and tools ready and waiting, with clear instructions (color, fixed syntax, fixed order, helpful teacher <-- necessary! not a sub plan activity!). If giving a kid a chart and a dictionary is like sending someone to a lumber yard with a picture of a night table and a shopping list, this is like sending someone to IKEA for a night table. It's still possible to make mistakes, but you'll probably end up with something not entirely unlike a table in the end.

Actual game prep, materials, and instructions follow!

Careers in Latin

Don't get your hopes up- it's not new jobs for Latin lovers :)

A very simple post today. I'm starting a res gestae project with my kids and the first step is having them pick careers (so, Auggie's career was "princeps" right?). Here's the list of careers I've been working on based partly on student requests.

click me click me

Please do feel free to add or comment. I'd appreciate it if you not change my entries as they stand; make a note in the "notes" field if you have a correction. Thank you :)

Teaching declensions contextually... and maybe comprehensibly? using pattern sentences

This year as you know I have been trying to do CI. However, like all Latin teachers using CI, I'm still struggling with the whole no-explicit-grammar-teaching-really-are-you-sure thing. There are a variety of ways to deal with this. I'm going to tell you today about one thing I did this year that seems to have helped to make the concepts of case endings and declensions semi-comprehensible. Just the concepts. It is still not real CI, but it helps bridge the gap.

It's also definitely not proper grammar instruction, and even though I'm explaining the entire first declension, you're not going to see any words ending in -tive for the rest of this post, so maybe take a deep breath if that's going to bother you. I'll do a proper post sometime on why I'm committing such heresy, I promise. The short version is as follows: most of my kids aren't going to a four year college, if they go to college at all. Most of them aren't going to a college that offers Latin, if they go to college at all. I love grammar, but they don't. What they need is time in school where they are doing something that they don't hate and that stimulates their brains. I tend to lay off the grammar heavy stuff because it scares them away. If that doesn't work for you, don't do it. My students may not be your students. Feel free to take some or all or NONE of my ideas here. I'm not trying to start a revolution against grammar- just trying to get through to my own kids and share what works.

STEP 1

Teach them Latin using CI for a couple of months. Get them used to hearing you use nouns in different cases without making a big deal out of it. Mix in those first and second declension nouns with third declension nouns, those neuters, maybe some i-stems if you're feeling spicy. Be a big kid and even use a fifth declension dies! If you don't tell them it's hard Latin II stuff, they won't think it's hard. Really!

STEP 2

When enough of them have asked about "why you keep saying canis instead of canem" or whatever, it is time for the first declension unit. One day, write the following on the board. Include the English! I call this a "pattern sentence," btw.

simia piratae astronautae ariēnam in lunā dat.
The monkey of the pirate gives the astronaut a banana on the moon.

Ask them to imagine the scene. Do it as dramatically as you can pull off. Circle it: Quis dat astronautae arienam in luna? Cuius simia astronautae arienam in luna dat? cui dat simia piratae arienam in luna? Datne simia piratae astronautae arienam in VILLA? non. etc. As they get bored of it, break it up by adding details like so:

Ask them what color the monkey is. What color the moon is. Maybe draw it on the board, but encourage them to build their own mind picture with their eyes closed too. Why does that monkey give the astronaut a banana? What's the pirate's name? Get this image into their brains. Ask them to draw it themselves, if you like (they would like to). Display their drawings. They may be 17, but they still love it when mom/teacher puts their drawings on the fridge/bulletin board.

MadLibs! How to get reps in without feeling the burn

MadLibs is a fantastic activity for when you are low on brainpower. It is a terrible activity for a day you are losing your voice, so don't use it then. It's also a great activity for your lowest achievers to get some class work done for once! TPRS stories are perfect for this since they're essentially MadLibs to begin with.

The steps to using it are as followings:
1. Earlier in the week, tell a story, TPRS style (or however). Maybe your story turns out like this:

Jack wants dogs. Jack goes to McDonalds. In McDonalds there are many dogs, and they are hungry. The dogs eat Jack.

2. Review it at least one more time through choral reading &/or translation or reenactment or something else to get them familiar with the target structures, story pattern, & vocabulary.

3. Hand out MadLibs sheet, which looks like this:

__________ (1) person
__________ (2) person or thing, plural
__________ (3) place
__________ (4) adjective (describing word)
__________ (5) transitive verb (I would never use the word 'transitive' for my students though)

 __________ (1) wants a __________ (2). __________ (1) goes to __________ (3). In __________ (3) there are many __________ (2), and they are __________ (4). The __________ (2) __________ (5) __________ (1).

Now draw the ending of the story to show me you understand what happened.

So you could end up with:

Hello Kitty (1) person
sandwiches (2) person or thing, plural
Rome (3) place
fuzzy (4) adjective (describing word)
kidnap (5) transitive verb

Hello Kitty wants sandwiches. Hello Kitty goes to Rome. In Rome there are many sandwiches, and they are fuzzy. The sandwiches kidnap Hello Kitty.

(imagine there is a beautiful drawing of Hello Kitty in a sack being carried by sandwiches here)

n.b.: The picture part is important because it shows you whether the kids comprehended their own story or not.

4. Reenactment time! Ask for volunteers to be actors & to have their stories read. Actors do not have to be the ones who wrote a given story. Read each MadLib aloud as the actors perform it. Reps, reps, reps!

Extra tips:

• The MadLib should be in the TL, but I always allow them to fill in the parts of speech in English so there's no limit to the madness. It also means even your weakest, most "I don't know Latin I can't do this" kids have no excuse not to write down some random words. 
• ... but  if someone puts an English word that you know everyone should have acquired by now (e.g. stupid = stultus, and they all know that), replace the English with Latin when you read aloud. I also always fix inflection of nouns, etc.
• Make it shorter than your original TPRS story. If your story had 3 locations, cut it down to one or two. Filling in the blanks gets pretty arduous.
• I often put them in pairs to do the MadLib part, since they're going to be asking each other for help thinking of adjectives anyway. I still require each individual student to make up their own worksheet though. Plus if some kids are slower to finish than others, you can have the finished pairs read & translate their stories together before you do the whole class part.

Here's a real example of a story I did plus its MadLibs worksheet.

PQA Ideas for Indirect Statement

This week I've been focusing on third declension and also introducing indirect statement a lot. I've been doing the latter almost entirely through PQA. I basically did one of the following each day this week, including the past ones as I went.

Indirect statement with dicit
Have on board:

• Quid agis? - How are you?
• bene / optime - well / excellent
• male / pessime - bad / really bad
• fessus / esuriens / odiosus sum - I'm tired / hungry / bored
• dicit se esse - says s/he is...
• dixit - said
• se - oneself
• Quis alius dixit...? who else said...?

Ask kids how they're doing. Repeat their answer to the class in the form "Angela se esurientem esse dicit." (Angela says she's hungry) Mix it up by asking "Quis alius se esurientem bene dixit?" (Who else said they were hungry?) They'll be like "Henry" so you'd say "Sic, Henrius quoque se esurientem esse dixit. Henrius et Angela se esurientes esse dixerunt." (Yes, Henry also said he was hungry. Henry and Angela said they were hungry.) etc.

Once they're sick of that, ask individuals to say nice things about their friends in the class & repeat them as above. "Angela Henrium pulchrum esse dicit." (Angela says Henry is handsome.)

ALT: Add "mendax - liar" to the board. Pretend a stuffed animal is talking to you (thanks Bob Patrick!). Say "Elephans mihi dixit Angelam longam esse. Estne mendax?" (The elephant told me Angela is tall. Is he a liar?)

Indirect statement with audit
Have on board:

• Quid audivisti? - What have you heard?
• fama benigna / rumor benignus - nice rumor
• audivi (person) esse... - I heard (person) is...

Ask for "nice" rumors about people: who is smart? who is tall? who is happy? who is sad? etc. If you feel like it, introduce habere (to have) as well and you can talk about pets, significant others, etc. If your kids already know infinitives, just use whatever they know. We haven't covered them really yet so I limited it. After kids give you answers, use your best juicy rumor voice to tell the class "audivi Angelam elephantem habere!" etc.

Indirect statement with vidit

I didn't come up with anything good for this question. I threw it in with the other ones here and there but didn't focus on it.

Indirect statement with putat

Have on board:

• Quis est optimus magister in schola? - Who is the best teacher in the school? (or similar: best singer, dancer, etc. or tallest/shortest person... and so on)
• putat ... (optimum magistrum in hac schola) esse - thinks ... is (the best teacher in this school).

If you're comfortable with it, the kids really prefer to answer who the WORST teacher is. Anyway, after their answers, say, "Angela magistrum optimum Mr. Ciceronem esse putat." You can ask if they agree or not: "quis consentit?" (Who agrees?)

Indirect statement with credit

This one is the most fun

Have on board:

• credit ... veros/as/a esse - believes ... are real
• credebat - used to believe
• umbra - ghost

Start with those & add things as your kids make suggestions. I also had alienus (alien), sirena (mermaid), monstrum (monster), numen dentium (tooth fairy), Bigfoot, Illuminati... etc.

Ask: quis credit umbras esse? (who believes ghosts are real?) I got a lot of yesses. Repeat their answers: "Angela credit umbras veras esse." (Angela believes ghosts are real) etc.

Then ask: "quid est stultissimum/alienissimum quod umquam credebatis?" (what's the stupidest/weirdest thing you ever believed?) This is when you'll get Santa, Tooth Fairy, etc. 

This has led to lively class discussion and a TON of reps. PQA can be hard so I thought I'd share things that worked for me.

Got any awesome PQA ideas for any topic? Or other ideas for dealing with indirect statement? I'd love to hear them. Thanks for reading!

How do I TPR "wage war" in the classroom? #latinteacherproblems

This past week I spent some time looking over what vocab my students had learned out of the top 200  (a fair amount) and what they still needed (lots). There's one tricky thing about Latin high frequency lists that I suspect isn't the case for most modern languages: a lot of the high frequency vocab is for war & statecraft. So I needed to teach my kids homo (human being), dux (leader), ducit (leads), bellum gerit (wages war), and vincit (conquers). I also needed caelum, navis, terra, aliquid, and aliquis (sky, ship, earth/land, something, and someone).

I did a dictatio (link) with most of those on Monday, and tried a storyask on Tuesday without much success. On Wednesday I did a madlibs (link) and read aloud & reenacted some of the kids' stories that came out of that. During the week we also read together some written stories (link and link) that incorporated a few of the words. but I wasn't getting the reps I wanted of the REALLY important words. I was kind of stuck trying to work out how to do a good story-ask where I could get reps of "wage war" and "conquer." I figured out a great way to simulate combat in the classroom: have them do rock paper scissors! Script below the cut.

Story, Dictatio, & Cloze: 3rd Person Plural Verbs

This one may work best as a reading than a TPRS story.

Story Script: Brad et Angelina infantem volunt.
Target Structures: 3rd person plural present active indicatives of known verbs, especially volunt, habent, vident, sunt.
Additional vocab: liber (child, not book), ad, it, multi, iam, etiam, discedit, puer, puella, audit, pulcher, tamen, dicit, nihil, numquam, plorat, stercorat, est, bene, inquit, + some cognates
Actor roles: Brad, Angelina
Additional actor roles: babies, children, animals, dolls

Story text & additional resources under the cut. 

A unit post-mortem

This week's "unit" (I use the term rather loosely here) was to focus on mittit (sends), infinitive + scit (knows how...), and nescit (doesn't know how...). I also wanted a ton of reps using the genitive (possessive), so mater Iuliae / Marci / Grumionis (Julia's/ Marcus's / Grumio's mother) was another target. For plot reasons we also worked with the phrase vitam bonam agere (to lead a good life).

This is an ungodly long post but I hope it'll be helpful.

Fashion Show - input activity for clothing and colors

This past week was "Spirit Week" at my school as well as Thanksgiving week, so needless to say, the kids weren't in a very scholarly mood. I decided to cover clothing since it's not super important for Latin students and half the kids were already in silly themed Spirit Week outfits. (Update, a week later: Yeah almost no one remembers the target structures from this week. Oh well. At least I can say I covered it! YMMV)

Before I did this activity, I'd already done some PQA and a story using clothing words. I'll put those up eventually.

Materials: lots of clothes, the weirder the better. Ask your drama department to borrow some if you can't gather them on your own, or ask the kids for volunteers (don't require it especially if you have a poorer population).

A small whiteboard for each judge is also helpful but you can use paper.

Roles: stylists, models, judges. Photographers optional.

Setup: Set up the desks so there's a "runway" for models to walk. Put all the clothes and accessories in one place. Put useful vocab up on the board, including colors and patterns as well as clothing terms. Have water handy because you're going to be talking a lot.

Where are all the TPRS lesson plans?!

When I first started to look into TPRS, I was really frustrated at how difficult it was to find example lesson plans. All I could find was statements like, "It's hard to give a lesson plan for this since it was so specific to my class, but it went sort of like this..." If you've been looking for advice on TPRS, you probably have had this issue too. Or maybe you didn't because you're much better at googling than I am! :) Anyway, here's the deal.

TPRS lesson plans don't really exist as such because TPRS lesson plans look like this:
Target Structures: wants, has, is
Story structure: Someone wants something, but they don't have it. They go to three places to try to find it. Eventually they find it, or something surprising happens maybe.
Activities: Ask a story. Do PQA. Follow up with a Retell activity.

Well, okay, maybe they're not always that minimal, but they often are. The most "lesson planny" ones I've seen are the ones Keith Toda kindly did on his blog here and here. And those are AWESOME. But personally I am not that together. I tend to come up with a story by writing my target structures on the board and staring at them until something like a story structure emerges. This is not reliable, and I can assure you that doing it at 7:15 am when you're about to teach it at 7:40 is stressful.

The cool thing about TPRS though, the freeing thing which makes it so much less exhausting than some other approaches, is that you CAN plan a lesson with just your target structures in mind and see what happens. The key is that instead of having a Lesson Plan, capital L capital P, you have a menu of lesson options depending on how things are going. My mental lesson menu for the week looks like this: