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!) 

News, news, news!

1) Website!
I now have a real website with like resources and stuff. This blog might eventually move over there, but that's extra work so we'll see. It's not pretty yet- no pictures or color to speak of. There are definitely formatting inconsistencies. BUT it's more or less together and I feel mostly okay about using it to link people to resources now. If you have a chance, please take a look and let me know what you think. Is it easy to find what you're looking for? Does the organization make sense at all? Any glaring omissions? Any formatting things that need fixing? I want it to be useful to people like YOU so please be as critical as you can!

It can be found at latinteachertoolbox.com.

2) Mille Noctes hits the big time
Mille Noctes used to be a sad little blog where I posted some stories sometimes. Then I got volunteers like Allyson Bunch and Mark Christiansen and stuff got real. Check it out here. It's not done yet, but it's sooooooo much more useful than it was. As a bonus, it also has tabs for Activities & Teaching Techniques and will eventually have a separate general Materials tag as well. I've been using it for a couple of weeks and LOVE it. I know, everyone thinks their own baby is the most beautiful, but trust me. It's beautiful.

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.

Biduum Noveboracense 2017

Salvete omnes!

I am just back from the first Biduum Noveboracense, held in Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY. I thought I'd share my experience and tell you some neat things I learned. It was about a four hour drive from my school, which wasn't ideal, but it was a heck of a lot closer than the other SALVI event I've been to in West Virginia! I wrote about that here. SALVI is also hoping to build regional nodes of itself so they can hold more Bidua throughout the country. So far they've had them in Los Angeles and Oklahoma, and they're planning more. Definitely subscribe to their blog if you're interested.

The basic deal with SALVI events is this: come make friends in Latin. That's basically it. I mean, there's a whole philosophical and pedagogical agenda to it, but what makes SALVI special is the atmosphere. I've heard Rusticatio described as "a big week-long house party in Latin." That's about right, minus the parts of a house party that are scariest to homebodies like me. The atmosphere is summed up with three dicta, thus:

regulae SALVIenses

serva patientiam!

Be patient, especially with yourself, but also with others. You will make a zillion mistakes, but that's okay. No one cares as much as you do. Keep trying.

mitte difficiliora - dic quod potes!

Throw out what's too hard, and say what you can. If you can't remember the exact word for what you want, find another way. For example, maybe you don't know how to say "Open the drawer please and get me a hand towel." That's fine. Instead, try this: quaeso, aperi hoc :points at drawer: et da mihi :mimes drying hands:. aqua in manibus est." Pointing and grunting is also a valid strategy.

memento te versari apud amicos

Remember that you're among friends. This is the big thing I like about SALVI. Sure, there're always be people you "click" with better than others. The expectation however is that we put that aside and treat one another kindly. The staff is explicitly there to HELP you through the experience, and not just to TEACH you something.

This Biduum was different from Rusticatio Veteranorum in a couple of key ways. First, it was Friday night through Sunday morning, so it was a LOT shorter. That length difference was my least favorite thing. bi is not enough duum! But that's a necessary limitation of doing these things during the school year. 

Secondly, there was more of a mix of proficiencies. Since RV is aimed at people with higher speaking & reading proficiencies, and Biduum is a mix, that's to be expected. I didn't mind this at all. In fact, it was kind of fun to hang out with people who hadn't done much spoken Latin and get to be one of the friendly (I hope) faces helping (I hope) them lose some of their shyness. At both RV and the Biduum, I felt totally safe asking questions during reading sessions.

Third, at RV, there is staff that feeds you. This is awesome. I was NOT looking forward to helping in the kitchen at Biduum because I am lazy. However, what I'd forgotten is that I like cooking and helping. I managed not to do a single dish the entire weekend, but I helped out a fair bit and definitely learned a LOT of useful words & expressions for food and cooking. 

Fourth, and this isn't a normal difference, but one notable difference between RV and this particular Biduum was BABIES! There were twin one year olds and a three month old, and they were so cute. If babies aren't your thing, not to worry; they are not a default feature of SALVI events. I did feel relieved, however, because I thought this would be my last immersion event for several years due to the kid I'm expecting in June. Now I feel like it doesn't have to be. I also learned some useful words for diapers and what babies do to them and so on, which will come in handy with my kid when I'm indoctrinating him/her into Latin nerddom enriching his/her brain by speaking Latin. The fact that there were babies running around was awesome for me personally, but it also expresses something about the comfiness of the atmosphere.

Anyway, so those are some words about my Biduum experience. Soon hopefully I will post two entries about different teaching & reading techniques we used. I still have to write them though so no promises!

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.

Latin Novellas: Getting the most out of the editing process

The Latin teacher community is really nice. A lot of people give themselves and their time abundantly to help other teachers. For this reason, sometimes it's easy to take the community for granted. Here are some suggestions from me on how to make sure you get the help you need for editing your work without inadvertently taking advantage of others.

(FWIW, I didn't really follow all of  these steps in writing Cloelia. I am trying to save you woes and rewrites by suggesting a better way of doing things.)

More under the cut.

Latin Novellas: How to improve your Latin

Ah, so you have read the other two entries and you're on board with trying to write really solid Latin. Awesome! Tips below! And I've decided the bit about how to ask for help editing/pre-reading should be its own post, so hold out for that on Thursday.

More under the cut.

Latin Novellas: Why attention to attested usage matters

When it comes to English, I try to be a descriptivist rather than a prescriptivist. If I am in a store and I hear a kid say, "I should of broughten mo' money." (and yes, I've heard kids in my rural, lower income, largely white area say "broughten."), I don't correct them because I'm not a jerk. If however I were writing a novel about similar kids for an ELL audience, I would never ever write "I should of broughten mo' money." Why? Because I don't want to teach them weird things that aren't considered "standard" English by the community of English speakers at large.

(To be clear, I don’t think anyone has written anything at the level of “I should of broughten” in Latin, but I wanted to share that weird example of English doing its living language thing because I think it’s super cool.)

With Latin, the community of Latin speakers is MUCH smaller, and the community of native Latin speakers is dead. All the same, my goal for my kids is for them to be able to read Latin which was written by native speakers and maybe to communicate with other Latinists around the country and throughout the world. Why? Because Latin is a language, and it deserves to be treated as such, even if it’s dead. I’ve struggled a lot with the “point” of teaching a dead language. One of the conclusions I’ve come to is that it doesn’t matter if it’s dead, so long as my kids are still getting the language-learning experience that helps their brains work better (I’m not a neurologist, clearly.). To that end, I want them to be exposed to the things about Latin that aren’t like English: the word order, the morphology, the preference for verb forms compared to English’s love of substantives, everything, etc. Just as we understand other cultures by learning how they differ, I believe we benefit from understanding languages on their own terms.

Now, we’re not perfect Latin speakers. No one alive is, probably. You’re going to make errors. By all means, do so as you teach and in your TPRS stories and whatever you do in your classroom. I’m not saying every Latin teacher needs to be Reginald Foster himself. So long as you are working to improve, ideally by reading more Latin, there’s no problem. (More under the cut)

Latin Novellas: Nuts & bolts

Salvete omnes! I wrote way too many words about Latin novella-writing so this is part one of a three part series.

First things first, these are the ones currently available. There are a lot of people working on more, which is awesome.

Also, just recently a FB group was created for people working on Latin novellas to discuss the process and help each other out a bit, etc. If you're planning to write something or already writing, join it! More under the cut.

Summer fun is speaking Latin!

Salvete internet!

I have been busy! Or rather, I have been at leisure, but in a non-English speaking way, and then lazy because I was tired from all that Latin leisure. The below is as usual a rather rambly reflection on my time at Rusticatio and the other spoken Latin stuff I've done recently. More under the cut.

Cloelia update

Woah, would you believe I've sold 100 copies of Cloelia? It's only been out less than a month! Thank you so much, everyone! I am delighted that you like it. If you don't like it, I can't offer refunds but please give it to someone else for free rather than burning it.

Anyway, important news! Life being the way it is, there were errors. I've put out a new version, which I'm calling v.1.1. The links to the new PDF & glossary are on the Cloelia page over here.

Click under the cut to see the detailed changes, but here's a general overview.

General Reasons for Changes

• Word Choice: forms of alius have been reexamined and often omitted or changed.
• Pronoun Position: personal pronouns, wherever possible, have been moved to second position to better reflect idiomatic word order. If they are in the first position, they are in most cases meant to be somewhat emphatic. The exception is "et eōs relinquō" on p. 37, which I simply couldn't do neatly. Additionally, "someone and I" phrases, e.g. "pater et ego" have been changed to "I and someone," e.g. "ego et pater" to better reflect Latin idiom.
• Vowel Length: corrected macrons on nefās, alterīus, and forms of lacrimāre.
• Prepositions: instances of "ēmittere ad" have been changed to "ēmittere in" to better reflect Latin usage. instances of "contra + accusative ... pugnare" have been changed to "cum + ablative ... pugnare" to better reflect Latin usage.
• Glossary: added, removed, and changed some definitions to reflect other changes made in this version.
• Other Changes: All other changes are marked with an asterisk and explained at the note.

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

CI Methods: an obvious epiphany

Friends, I just figured out why "CI methods" isn't a thing. Yes, I know I've been looking into CI for over a year. Yes, I know you already understand why it's not a thing. Just in case you don't, though, I'm going to share my epiphany. Don't laugh.

CI Methods isn't a thing because CI isn't a methodology. It's material we use to reach a goal.

Think of it this way: there are a lot of kinds of chefs. Some chefs focus on Italian food. Some focus on dessert and we call them pastry chefs. Some focus on making weird foams that no one really wants to eat. All chefs, however, work with food.

CI is food. Without food, we are hungry. Without CI, we do not acquire language.

Maybe we should stop abbreviating it because acronyms feel specific and official and definable. Ditto capitalization. There's no such thing as Comprehensible Input. There's just input that's comprehensible, and input that isn't. As Latin teachers, we've traditionally been doing the latter. Oops. That's like a chef making supper out of clay and paint: it might look like something delicious and nutritious, but it's not.

This lowercase comprehensible input is not a method. It's stuff. Stuff we have to use to do our job as language teachers (or communication facilitators or whatever BVP is calling it this week).

It's the material. It's not the method. We don't talk about "food chefs." All (effective) chefs work with food. Maybe a pastry chef focuses on food that's in dessert form. Maybe an Italian chef focuses on food that tastes like food in Italy. But it's all food, and it all fills your belly. So you can't have a "CI teacher." You can have an effective language teacher- one who works with comprehensible input, or you can have a non-CI teacher who is perhaps still effective, but not at language acquisition. Maybe they're an effective teacher of grammar- that's like being a teacher of food science. Even if you know all the chemistry, though, you still can't make a souffle without some eggs. Lowercase comprehensible input is the eggs. And you don't call a chef who makes souffles an Egg Chef. You call him or her a chef.

I can't believe I just got this. This might be totally incomprehensible to someone who isn't me, but I felt like I needed to get it out. I hope this is helpful for someone else, or perhaps you'll get a laugh.

:)

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.

"So, do you speak Latin?"

Recently I wrote a post for CANE's blog, CANENS, and I posted it to Latin Teacher Idea Exchange on Facebook. A fellow teacher replied,

When you have time, would you be willing to expand on your use of oral Latin? Like most Latin teachers, I was not taught to speak Latin so I am super hesitant to start. But I know I should get over myself for the sake of my students. How did you start?

So here I am. First, the title of this entry. sodales, you know that question and the embarrassment that attends it. "Well, no, but you see, I can read it. I mean like I've been reading it for a really long time. So I KNOW it, I just don't speak it. You see?" I cringe inside every time I have to answer that. Or I used to, anyway. No one's asked me in a while. But I hated that question because well, NO, I didn't speak Latin, even though I'd been studying it for half my life. Ouch.

But now I do speak Latin. Kind of. I can have conversations about random stuff especially if it's not technology-heavy subject matter. I'm still not fluent at ALL and there's a pretty heavy English influence on my word order. But I certainly speak it better than I do any other language besides English, my L1.

So, how did I start? Some tips to get over the hump.

1. Yes, you do know Latin. I have been studying Latin for 15ish years. I may not speak Latin, but I know it. You do too. It's there, even if it takes a while to come out.

2. Be patient with yourself. Go look at this entry and turn those tips on yourself. Guess what? You're going to get case endings and tenses wrong. All the time. ALL the time. It's not the end of the world. Do your best to get it right when you're teaching a new structure, but if it's just in passing or practice with other Latinists, give yourself a break. I've heard excellent Latinists who have been speaking for YEARS make case mistakes. It's what happens. How do you think Italian was invented?

3. Baby steps. You don't have to be able to give a lecture in Latin to start using it with your kids. On the contrary, you really shouldn't! You need to pick a way to say yes & no (I use sic and non.), a couple of adjectives, and you're done. Like this:

Board: -ne = ?, sic = yes, non = no, procerus = tall, brevis = short, est = is.
T: estne Shelby procera? :gesture with your hand way above Shelby's head: (Your speaking speed should be something around where the bad kind of tourist tries to speak English to non-English-speaking locals: EHSSSTTTT NAY SHELBY PROOOOO-CEHR-AHH?)
Ss: non.
T: bene! Shelby procera non est! estne Shelby brevis? :gesture below Shelby's height:
Ss: sic.
T: sic! Shelby brevis est! estne Shelby brevis an procera? :use each hand to gesture one or the other:
Ss: short?
T: bene! :big smiles: Shelby brevis est! Shelby procera non est! Shelby brevis est!

Repeat with other students. Pick some more adjectives or nouns. Consider throwing in some comparatives- estne Shelby procerIOR quam Julia? etc. Congrats, you're using oral Latin in the classroom. It gets more complex from there as you need it to. Check out this lesson plan by Keith Toda. You'd be doing the same as above, only add in some question words (again, provide them on the board). You can ask: estne elephantus laetus? estne elephantus tristis? vultne Earl elephantum? etc. Which brings us to 3.

4. The bar is not that high. In Keith's story, you are only dealing with three verbs (est, habet, vult) and two adjectives (laetus, tristis). It's not brain surgery. You can do this on Day 1 of Latin class even if you have never taken Latin and have only read this post & Keith's.

How?

Your kids don't speak Latin either. They won't know you're keeping it simple. They need you to keep it simple, and go slow, and repeat yourself.

There is no one to feel embarrassed in front of or to feel inadequate compared to. Spend a couple minutes practicing Latin with your kids every day or so, point at your board a lot, and your speech will become smoother.

5. Take any opportunity to improve. The above stuff will get you over that embarrassment hump. Now let's talk about how to become a functional Latin speaker. A bullet list! In ascending order of effort required!

• Listen to Latin (and even better here and also see the listening links here. And also, if you have audio from your textbook series, load it up on your phone and listen to it while you drive. Really.)
• Read more Latin 
• Write to someone else in Latin, like a penpal.
• Speak to others aloud in Latin, including your students, pets, furniture... or just join a spoken Latin gathering either IRL or online (I host one weekly on Saturday mornings and sometimes more often. Info & calendar here.)
• There may be local IRL Latin speaking gatherings near you. I only know about Amherst, MA (contact TJ Howell) & Boston. If you know of others, please post them in the comments!
• Go to a Latin camp! Then go to more! Conventiculum Bostoniense; Conventiculum Lexintoniense & Dickinsoniense; SALVI's Rusticationes & other programs; Paideia Institute events; Europa Latina's summer school in Sicily,

I hope that gives you some ideas on how to take the plunge. Next time, I'll talk more about how I use it in class on a daily(ish) basis.

edit 8/4/2016: Look under the tag "Spoken Latin" for more similar entries, especially this one with a much better list of resources & opportunities. You may also find this "Useful Phrases for Spoken Latin" document helpful for saying a lot of things Cicero never taught you how to say.