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!) 

Creating CI materials

You can’t.

Well, bye everyone!

Well, okay, since you’re here, I guess I could explain what I mean. Recently I was asked if I could write some short informational “CI” texts to include in a packet to be distributed to various Latin teachers. I said no, partly because I’m overcommitted as it is, and partly because I’d have had to like, research stuff, which is effort.

The thing that’s stuck with me though is the idea that we can include “CI materials” in such packets. I don’t think there’s such a thing as “CI materials.” There’s definitely such a thing as “I” materials, that is, materials that provide input in the target language. The “C” is as usual the difficult part. The reason you can’t make “CI materials” as such is that you can’t make something and guarantee it’ll be comprehensible to all parties.  I’m comfortable writing for my own students because I have a decent idea of what’s known versus unknown to them. When writing Cloelia or other stuff for public consumption, however, I don’t have that knowledge. That’s why I don’t want to be known as someone who writes “CI novellas” or “CI texts.”

There are certainly things you can do to make materials that are CI-friendly, however. What I mean by CI-friendly, or CI-oriented, is this: the texts (or videos whatever) are designed with the end goal of comprehensibility in mind, and are presented in ways that make that goal as easy to attain as possible… assuming the teacher & students put the work in to make it there.
Here are some ways you can make materials CI-friendly.

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.

ACL Roundup

Like almost every other Latin CI blogger, I went to the ACL annual conference last week. If you're not familiar, ACL is the American Classical League, and it's the big national organization for non-college teachers of Latin. I believe it's technically for post-secondary too, but since it focuses on Latin pedagogy, it's de facto secondary & primary level Latin teachers. It'd be cool if more post-secondary types worried about pedagogy, but it's not where we are right now. Even some MAT granting institutions don't actually talk about pedagogy and outsource it to the Ed department... which, well, anyway. ACL.

It was fun! And HUMID. But fun! I saw lots of excellent talks that I feel like I haven't even begun to process properly yet. I actually feel like all the information slid out of my ears on the plane home, unfortunately. Thankfully, a lot of presentations are online here at the meeting's Sched page, so I can jog my memory. I took the liberty of organizing those materials into a big google folder, which you can find here. The starred ones are those that had direct CI applicability.

Here are some random thoughts and take-aways.

It's a good time to be a Latinist!

Within the last three or so weeks, the number of Latin novellas on the market has more than doubled!

Here is my cat modeling with the titles on offer. What's great about these is that they are, unlike most textbook readings:
1) actually interesting
2) actually readable by first or second year Latin students
3) starring (some) characters who aren't boys

Well, only two have what you can call female protagonists... and only one (Cloelia, full disclosure it's mine) has ONLY a female protagonist and an equal number of named male & female characters, but it's still better than the Latin textbooks out there. There are more coming out soon from Pomegranate Beginnings with female protagonists, too. We're still working on not white, not hetero representation, but this is a good start. I've got something in mind but it's not my next project. If you have an idea for representing a more diverse Rome in text or whatever medium... DO IT. We need it. Latin is for everyone, not just cisgendered, heterosexual, white English upper-class school boys in good enough shape to row for Oxford when they're done at Eton pip pip cheerio. Let's get our textbooks to reflect that.

You can find them here:

• Cloelia: Puella Romana (free full text PDF also available) by Ellie Arnold (me!)
• Brando Brown Canem Vult by Carol Gaab, translated & adapted into Latin by Justin Slocum Bailey
• Pluto: Fabula Amoris by Miriam Patrick and Rachel Ash
• Itinera Petri: Flammae Ducant by Dr. Robert Patrick
• Iter Mirabile Dennis et Debrae by Dr. Christopher Buczek

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.

Latin, Latin everywhere

Two announcements relating to Latin reading material.

I wrote a novella.

This is not a final draft, if ever there will be such a thing. It's definitely a work in progress, but the story is complete and it's been proofread by many people. That being said, since I am still making changes, there will be errors. Please comment if you find any, or if something seems unclear.

Some questions you might have:

1. May I use this for my class?

Absolutely. Give me feedback on how it goes. Click here for copyright info in friendly, comprehensible language.

2. Is this appropriate for all ages?

... That depends on you and your administrators and your students' parents. It contains two stories about rape: chapter five about Lucretia, and chapter six about Callisto. They're not graphic or anything: all it is is scelus contra feminam fecit, cupivit, and violavit. If you want to, you can print it off without those two chapters. It's designed to work even if those are skipped.

That being said, I think that they're important discussion points for how Romans viewed honor and womanhood, and they explain the importance of vows, which will become relevant later in the story. I'd say definitely you can read it with 9-12 graders, and with middle schoolers if you feel confident no one will flip out. The concepts in it are probably overall a little confusing for elementary schoolers so I'd suggest just using adapted excerpts with them.

3. Is there a glossary?
Yeah, here. Use that spreadsheet to make whatever style of glossary you like best. I will probably do a version of the text with side by side vocab eventually, and I do plan to make a printable booklet version of that full glossary as well.

4. Are you going to publish this so I can buy real book versions?

Eventually, I hope so. If I self-publish it and can sell hard copies, I hope I'll be able to include illustrations. Know anyone who wants to do illustrations? For a one-time fee? Email me!

In any case, it will still remain online for free, because it's important to me to make more reading material available NOW, and I am lucky enough to not need the extra income that exclusively selling it might offer (nor am I so deluded to think that amount of income would even buy me a soda!) 

For right now I suggest booklet-printing it on your school copier. Make sure you keep that last blank page.

5. I want to do work! Is it okay if I make something to add to it, like illustrations or grammar notes or audio recordings or videos or a full/partial English translation or tiered versions of the chapters?
YES. PLEASE DO. Just credit me as the author of the story, and share your work with others (and ideally me!). Click here for a summary of adaptation & sharing & attribution rights.

6. Copyright Information

Cloelia, puella Rōmāna by Eleanor Arnold is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

And secondly...

Mille Noctes is live!

What is Mille Noctes? Think of it as a children's library for Latin. It's my attempt at creating a central place for Latin teachers to share free, low-level Latin readings. My direct inspiration was listening to Kevin Ballestrini's "Gradus Parvi" presentation at CANE 2016, which can be found here. In it, he presented a variety of ideas about reading material for Latin learners, but one thing he made a call for was a central place teachers could go to just find a ton of stories. That's what I'm trying to do, basically.

Right now it's almost all my own stories, but I have several more to put up from other teachers. Many of the stories began as story scripts for TPRS and can be used that way, but there are also several that are better for reading.

So, this is my request to you. Check it out. See if it'll be useful to you. Share it with your students as a place to go for more Latin. If you have piles of original Latin stories- whether you're a CI teacher or not- consider sharing them with the world. If you don't want to share them directly on the blog, I'd be happy to share them as links to a Google Doc or other site. The more stories, the better.

For a more thorough description of what MN is and why it is what it is, click here for its About page and here for its How to Use page.

Staying in the Target Language: Tips from someone bad at it (& thoughts on an EdCamp)

On Saturday I attended langcampct, an "EdCamp" for language teachers. An EdCamp is an "unconference" (I know) which is sort of a thing where the participants themselves decide, on the day, what sessions they'd like to have, and there's no dedicated panel leaders or schedules or talks. On the whole, I think such a format would be most valuable as part of a larger pedagogy conference: one or two blocks of "unconference" with more structure for the rest of the day. That aside, it was interesting and valuable, and most importantly, free!

This is what our session schedule ended up looking like.
You can find notes from all the sessions linked there, and there are some additional ones here.

The session I got the most out of in terms of concrete ideas was about ways to encourage students to use the target language (editable doc: please be careful). I didn't love everything I heard- since it was not all CI people by any means, there was a lot about forcing output. But, this leads us to the main topic of this post.

One major goal for a lot of CI practitioners is to stay in the TL for 90% of the class time. This is something I struggle with big time for a couple of reasons. Mainly, I'm not that good at Latin-speaking yet. Working on that. But also, my kids aren't super interested in participating because there's no motivation for them to do so. I've tried a lot of different participation tracking systems but they're hard to keep track of in the moment and they're mostly fundamentally punitive. So... Gotta find a good way. Here are some things I've been chewing on lately, plus my favorites from this past weekend's "unconference."

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!

Story Script: Hungry Hungry Students

Story Script: Hungry Hungry Students
Target Structures: consumere possum, male/bene sapit
Additional vocab: consumit, esuriens, fufae, babae, cibus, satis, satis superque...
Actor roles: "Iulia"
Additional actor roles: various things being eaten if you want

Link to story in Latin

English version with bolded variables

Julia is hungry. Julia wants to eat. Julia is in Rome, but food is not in Rome. What can Julia eat? Julia sees a table. "Can I eat a table?" says Julia . Julia takes the table and eats. "Eww! I can eat a table, but it tastes bad!" says Julia . Julia is still hungry. "I am going to Britain. Perhaps food is in Britain."

Julia goes to Britain, but food is not in Britain. Julia sees a big tiger in Britain. "Can I eat a big tiger?" says Julia. Julia takes the big tiger and eats. "Eww! I can eat a big tiger, but it tastes bad!" says Julia. Julia is still hungry. "I am going to Spain. Perhaps food is in Spain.

Julia goes to Spain, but food is not in Spain. Julia sees little fishes in Spain. "Can I eat little fishes?" says Julia. Julia takes the little fishes and eats. "Wow! Little fishes taste good!" Julia is not hungry, because she eats (has eaten) enough.

Oh no! She ate enough and more than enough! Julia explodes.

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. 

Stuff for your walls to help you teach and your kids learn

On the heels of my last post about the scary side of being a language student, it seems like a good time to share one of the ways I support my students' learning and my own teaching: stuff on the walls. All of the posters have both Latin and English. (editing to add: Tell me if any links are wrong or broken please!!)

How I use these:
tldr purposes:

1. Useful to point to when I want to use an adverb or something we haven't targeted yet
2. Scaffolds output activities with high frequency, very useful words.
3. Some kids use them to help with little words on assessments
4. More written Latin around the room means kids spend more time looking at written Latin.
5. Color and charm!

Most important are the Question Word posters. Many TPRS teachers use them. When circling, I point at the correct interrogative as I ask the class questions. Over time the kids mostly learn them without my directly targeting them.

The word posters generally are there partly for my own convenience and partly for the kids. It means I have more narrative freedom because a lot of the "little words" are available for me to point to when I'm telling a story. Sometimes you need a "therefore" that you didn't plan for and it's not worth fully targeting for this one time... so with these, it's provided. The kids also like them for doing free writes. I've also been complimented on my room by my department chair and principal, so that doesn't hurt either.

I heard somewhere that having lots of readable text just around increases literacy. That is a big part of why I made these. I don't know if it's true or what, but Latin Latin Everywhere seems good to me.

The good stuff is under the cut.

Story Script: arca plena simiarum / A Box Full of Monkeys

Here is a quick story I wrote up. I haven't tested it yet, but I think it'll be okay at least as a reading. You could cut parts of it and use it as a story, but you might need to simplify the vocab depending on what's known and unknown. I designed it to target the first declension endings & some basic uses, but it also ends up dealing with numbers a little bit and imperatives. Here's the link to the Google Doc. A text of the story with English is under the cut.

Target Structures: endings of first declension nouns (so not really a good "structure" as such)
Additional vocab: Glossary provided on google doc.
Actor roles: at least two monkeys, UPS man, girls, athletes, teacher, restaurant owner

Additional roles: extra monkeys, extra athletes, extra girls

Story Script & activities: The Gift of the Magi

Salvete omnes! It has been a busy week so I apologize for only now updating. Today it's just a quick set of links. I wrote a version of The Gift of the Magi in Latin, and I have an accompanying set of Flyswatter sentences and a Comprehension Check.

Story
Flyswatter
Comprehension Check

Sorry, no English this time! I found that my kids could understand the story if I just read it to them with gestures, but they received it better if we watched this somewhat creepy animation of the story first. Not recommended if the Uncanny Valley isn't your thing:

If anyone knows of an un-narrated version that still has sounds and music, please comment! I think it'd work a lot better for our purposes.

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.

Venatio / Animal Hunt

This game is for those times when you need a lot of input on one or two structures, and you just don't have the brainpower to do another storyask. I came up with it on a day when the kids wanted to each hold a stuffed animal, and I needed a way to make that educational.

Materials:
Object to "hide" - small stuffed animals like Beanie Babies are great, but you could do it with markers or really anything. The object can be one thing, or you can have a variety of them and let the Seeker choose.

Active Players:
Teacher
Hider(s)
Seeker

Setup:
Target Structures should be on the board. The first time I played this game, I wanted to get a ton of repetitions for "s/he goes." My board had "I go," "you go," and "s/he goes."

We'd also done a lot of previous work with "s/he wants" and some with "I want" and "you want" so I peppered those in as well. You could easily add forms of "has." You can also do a version of this with prepositional phrases (see below).