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.

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.

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

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

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

Story 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. 

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.

Story Script - Offerings

You can change "god" to "king," "queen," "goddess," etc. very easily. There are alternate endings to this one because different things happened in different classes. This gives you a good idea of how the same basic structures can end up with a totally different story.

Target Structures: likes, gives, brings, comes

Additional vocab: sacrifice (noun), gift, sends to prison, sword, kills

Actor roles: authority figure, worshiper/subject

Additional roles: various gifts (one class had human sacrifices...)

Story Script - Putting it on the table

I used this as a short dictation to introduce brings, comes, puts, & leaves. You could change it around a bit and use it to play with prepositional phrases.

Target structures: brings, comes, puts, leaves

Additional vocab: any nouns you want

Actor roles: student(s)

Additional roles: up to 4 students total

Story Script - Real friends help you...

I made this story as a dictation, but I suppose you could do it as a storyask too. This is a story that was really highly personalized to my students. The original had a student giving me a donut, because on the previous Friday I'd been all about donuts. There's a lake right behind our school. It's also a very small town, so they all know the police officer I put in the story. It may or may not work for you, but perhaps it'll give you some ideas. Replace JB with whatever celebrity your kids find irritating.

Target Structures: comes, gives, likes, brings

You could easily make this more about moods, too.

Additional vocab: kills, captures

Actor roles: two students, police officer

Additional roles: up to 4 more students

Story Script - Quam stultus infans! (What a Stupid Baby!)

I got the basic idea for this one from one in Matava's first book of story scripts, the one for the German structure "I can't do it anymore!" I believe.

Bolded words are ones you can let your kids choose.
Target Structures: puts (ponit), brings (fert), leaves (discedit), removes (removit). You could easily add "goes."
Additional vocab: doctor, nose, stupid, table
Actor roles: concerned adult, doctor
Additional actor roles: baby, thing in nose

Personalization saves the day!

This week, I have been focusing on imperatives with my Latin II's. I made up a long, complicated story that used my target vocab and had a few commands in it. I thought it was pretty entertaining. My students, however, were unimpressed. It wasn't really relevant to their lives at all and even though I had them choose details like locations and characters, it was kind of lukewarm. I also had trouble circling enough because I was trying to rush through to get done with the whole story. By the end, I had about 6 reps of "sumit" (picks up), and I'd used imperatives less than 10 times. For a long story, that's pretty low.

The last period of the day is largely made up of a lot of very perky, silly sophomores. They're also the ones who are coming out with the most spontaneous Latin, both in my classroom and apparently elsewhere. On the day I did the story, Cornelia happened to tell me that her mom "hates Latin" now because every time she asks Cornelia to do something, Cornelia says ,"non!" On the same day, the sophomore class adviser, who is also Maria's mother, had told them they needed to behave and settle down for me or else she wouldn't let them do Lipsync- a big school event for which they've been preparing for a month. Cornelia is playing a flip-flop in their act (don't ask). So, I wrote this story for the following day: