As this school year is coming to an end, student attendance is spotty between standardized testing, retake testing, exams, and exam exemptions. I am still teaching as much as possible in this situation, but sometimes I just give up for that day. What to do then? Well, for starters, I ask the students to help … Continue reading Seating – Ideas vs the Reality of Live Students
End of Year Assessments
I struggle with assessments, in general, and final assessments, in particular. Everything inside of me fights this idea of testing or assessing students on how close or far they are from a set goal. I can't wrap my head around the idea that every student should and must be at the same point, with the same … Continue reading End of Year Assessments
Our First Class SSR
[Disclaimer: This year, in my Latin III Prose class, I used SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) to mean the time at the start or end of my class when students chose a novella, magazine, comic, etc. to read on their own. I have since been informed that SSR is generally used to mean the reading of … Continue reading Our First Class SSR
Games
A quick look at some childhood games re-imagined to get students speaking, listening, and moving in class without a lot of griping. All of these games can work really well in a classroom focused on CI. I Piscatum! / Go Fish! Keith Toda does a great job of describing how Go Fish! works well in … Continue reading Games
Bell Ringers
The beginning of class is a difficult time. I'm required to stand in the hall outside my classroom from bell to bell to help monitor students as they move from class to class. This leaves my own students on their own in the classroom. I've considered passwords and having students wait in the hall until … Continue reading Bell Ringers
The Three R’s of Education
No, it's not Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic... in my case, it is Reading, Research, and Recovery. I am still recovering from my surgery and in my boredom (there is really only so much daytime television a sane person can watch without losing their mind) I finally decided to purchase and read some of the most … Continue reading The Three R’s of Education
Published Novella – Romulus Rex
After months of wishing Amazon's new publishing platform, a takeover from Createspace, would acknowledge Latin as a language, I finally gave in and published my first novella through Lulu. You can purchase it here. This novice level Latin language novella has 80 unique words (excluding proper names, different forms, and words defined in the text), … Continue reading Published Novella – Romulus Rex
The Three C’s of CI
[You might have noticed this post appeared, originally, incomplete... it was. After having planned open-heart surgery at the beginning of the school year, a large ovarian mass, borderline cancerous, was discovered in December. My surgery was planned for March 19th. Wednesday, March 13th, I ended up in the emergency room with extreme pain. I had … Continue reading The Three C’s of CI
Additional Vocabulary
For each thematic group of vocabulary and unit, there are always a few words I use in the context of comprehensible input which I don't introduce as a flashcard (target vocabulary for that unit). Here's how I handle those additional words: Whiteboard I write a list of the additional words at the start of the … Continue reading Additional Vocabulary
Quizzes
Quizzes are a part of my life and my students' lives. And though I do believe language acquisition is personal and every person, even with the same input, comprehends, internalizes, and processes language at a different pace, I find myself required to quiz every student at the same time, in the same way. However, I … Continue reading Quizzes
Dinosaurs Speak Latin 