Latin 3 is reading Piso: Ille Poetulus by Magister P as a whole class novel. Don’t miss that Magister P has a teacher’s manual and audio files to accompany Piso. The teacher’s manual offers many activities to allow a teacher a chance to engage students in the novel without creating materials to go with it. Word clouds are a favorite for me, especially when they have been prepared for me already like the Piso teacher’s manual has. There are also one word at a time cards ready to go for you to use for students to use vocabulary in context. Follow Bob Patrick’s instructions for one word at a time stories.
As we prepared to read chapter 3, I wanted a vocabulary activity but was feeling we needed something different. The best part of Magister P’s teacher manual materials is that they are easily adaptable to other activities. I took the one word at a time story cards from the Piso teacher’s manual and handed them out to students in groups of 3-4. Student’s were then tasked with designing a still image that represents the structure. Each group took a picture of the scene and then turned the picture into canvas. Unfortunately, these types of tasks always take longer than I hope as we committed 20 minutes to complete this. Even though there wasn’t a lot of input happening during this phase, groups were collaborating, I had the chance to mingle throughout the groups and ask them about their designed scenes and students were helping other groups by playing the background roles of other groups pictures which become in interesting community building for the group. Here are some examples of students work.
The students in the above picture interpreted mecum it in this way. The next day, I projected each group’s photo and completing a picture talk in Latin and asked Latin questions of each group. I typed simple Latin sentences to identify each picture for a matching quiz for students after the picture talk. This particular picture offered a compelling discussion during the picture talk because of the students in the background. I began the picture talk discussion simply. Tune cum puella it? Are you going with the girl? The response was yes. Then, I recast or circled the structure by asking “illene cum puella it?” Is he (the student with the shield) going with the puella? The answer was no which led me to ask numerous questions of each student. Did you want to go with the girl? And with each question and response I recast or circled the idea. Lastly, I directed the conversation to the 2nd student who was clearly photo bombing this photo. This created a compelling dialogue as I asked the original group if they the photo bomb pleased them. Placetne tibi, do you like, and similar constructions show up often in Piso.
The next example below:
These gentlemen use puppets and figurines to create their big army. And even though they purposefully included a mischievous face at the bottom, there was much to talk about. I began with a focus on the exercitus magnus. I asked things like, “Are the soldiers in one (the same) army? Are they fighting together or separately? Who is the leader of the army?” I saved “Who is the leader of the army?” for last as I figured there the gentleman would point to the silly face. This created an opportunity for added input. “Will (…) be a good or bad, strong or weak leader? Do you want/like to be in the big army with this leader? Whose weapons will you use in the big army? Who do you want to fight with (…) as the leader?” are a few of the examples. This created a rich narrative not only around those 3 specific students but also around the idea of what makes a good and effective leader.
By the time we finished this task we spent 20 minutes at the end of a class planning, staging, taking and turning in pictures. We spent 30 minutes, mostly in Latin, creating narratives around each picture that was centered around the students or some idea like leadership that can be connected to pictures. We looked at 12 pictures that covered 15 word cards from Magister P’s teaching manual. For Latin teachers, the students engaged and responded in Latin conversation that offered numerous compelling reaps filled with certain structures like placetne tibi, tune vis, ablative of accompaniments with the preposition cum, noun adjective agreement in multiple cases, although nominative and accusative forms happened more frequently and even some basic conditions. I attempted to construct future less vivid conditions with the first group of students and in the process I realized that I need to read more of these master my own acquisition of these forms.
Lastly, we spent 10-12 minutes completing a matching assessment which I had prepared beforehand. Total, I spent about 25 minutes preparing this. I had to photocopy the Piso structures and cut out the cards. This time I allowed students to pick groups as I wanted them to be comfortable in the hope of more creativity. I spent about 15 minutes viewing the photos, writing 1 simple Latin sentence to match each and uploading them into a quiz in canvas. I could have lowered the prep time by completing an ad hoc quick quiz delivered aurally on the spot.
Camera Freeze vocabulary is a fantastic way to create compelling narratives centered around students. It is low prep and combined with a reading offers an effective way to create rich target language input for students.
Comprehensible Antiquity 