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.

Planning a CI Curriculum. I hope.

My school requires us to put a Unit-by-Unit plan into an online system with learning goals and assessments and activity plans and essential questions and objectives and and and and and etc. Doing this for a CI course is a total headache. No one has put anything of this level online and I can understand why. Such things exist for other languages, but you have to buy them. One day maybe you’ll be able to buy Latin ones too. A girl can dream!

This year, however, I have been building my own curriculum ē culō, if you will. I am going to share with you how I have been doing that. Here’s the tl;dr version:

1. Define goals and limits…
2. … and create a curriculum that suits them.
3. Choose vocabulary based on frequency and utility.
4. Choose target structures based on frequency and utility.

Define goals and limits...

Consider these questions.

1. Are you using a textbook?
2. Do you have the freedom to transform your curriculum?
3. What are your goals for your students?
4. How much can your students realistically acquire in a year?

Here are my personal answers.

1. No. My kids seem to hate books, and I'm a control freak so I don’t like doing what textbooks tell me to. This is crazy and I recommend you let a book help you.
2. Yes, I am the only Latin teacher, and I can basically teach however I want. 
3. The usual goal for a Latin teacher is for students to be able to read classical Latin literature by their fourth year. That’s my “reach” goal. For right now, it’s more like “get them to see English isn’t the only language” and “have at least one academic class they don’t hate.”
4. With TPRS the average number of structures you can hope for a class to acquire in a year is between 150-200. That means that if you have 40 weeks of class, you can do roughly 5 structures a week (at best!).*  

* Edited to add this note: This number comes from my Blaine Ray TPRS workshop. I strongly suspect that this number depends A LOT on (a) how much input the teacher is able to provide, (b) how comprehensible that input is, (c) how interesting that input is, and finally (d) individual student aptitude and attention. That means it should be considered an upper limit, probably. Realistically I think this year my kids have got about 50 vocabulary words really solidly known in many forms, and they can deal with present & imperfect tense active indicative pretty well. They have also seen perfect & future but I wouldn't say they've internalized how those work yet.

… and create a curriculum that suits them.

So, my curriculum should:

• have a maximum of 150-200 target structures
• follow whatever scope & sequence I think is most useful
• not scare kids away or make them hate me or themselves

My first year I taught out of CLC and none of those requirements were met. Good heavens, not by a long shot. This year I have been going by the seat of my pants and things are more or less working out. That middle point though- the scope & sequence- is really very hard to do on your own. I looked around at different books and things. The thing I’ve found that works best for me is to just follow the NLE syllabus for scope & sequence, plus some additions to Latin I that make life more interesting (complementary infinitives) and grammar more comprehensible.

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 :)