Experienced CI teachers keep posting about the importance of reading. 8 pages a day in level 3? I’m definitely not there yet. Some of my students get there on self directed reading days, but this time of year it is hard to motivate a whole class to read. Recently my level 1 students are asking grammar type questions and I noticed that a few of them are using accusative objects in their writing, but many are not. I decided it was time to take a day for some comparative language structure work.
After some PQA and TPR vocabulary work we completed a partner read. There are many ways to set up a partner read.
- 1 partner read target language – 1 partner translate into native language. -from Magister Patrick.
- 1 partner read target language – 1 partner write a question – can direct question or simply let student come up with one. – from Magister P.
- 1 partner read target language – 1 partner draw that section. – from Magister P.
- 1 partner read target language silently – 1 partner read native language out loud
- 1 partner read target language – 1 partner write a T/F statement about the section. These can be used for more PQA or circling around the section with the whole group. –from Magister P.
I wanted something a bit different that might lead students to sticking with Latin for the reading. 1 partner read Latin out loud while the 2nd partner rewrote the Latin story in an English word order. This was a great activity for this time of year as the 2nd partner didn’t view it as “translation work” but they had to understand enough of the passage to know something needed to be rearranged to be more like English.
I put the story into the left side of a table and we completed a whole class read afterward to review what an “English” word order might look like in a Latin passage. This allowed me to do some popup grammar, often with direct objects or indirect objects versus subjects. It also allowed me to do some isolated circling with a different focus. We followed a round of stultus, taken from Keith Toda’s blog. Students could use the right hand side text to check my translation mistakes.
Lastly, this allowed me to consider a comparative language standard without spending too much time on it. Our district world language department has chosen “Identify and apply structural patterns of the target language and compare them to the student’s own language” as a priority standard in level 1. This was a simple activity that demonstrated what students did and didn’t know but continued to focus on reading Latin for understanding.
Comprehensible Antiquity 