Still not reading yet - it'll probably be another week or two, we're still in the thematic set up (plus also catching up from february) stages. I usually don't spend four weeks or so on setup, but last semester was a mess, so I want to give the kids a lot of time to go back over some stuff, to get used to speaking/reading/listening/writing in small chunks instead of diving straight into a book. There are also great arguments for diving straight into a book! I'm just not doing that right now. :D
These are my plans this week.
Monday
Today they have a speaking assessment.
I found some pictures of monsters I liked a lot:
The kids will, on their white boards, fill in the sentence at the bottom. The first slide is always "what does this monster do with its..." The other is always "what is the monster's method of eating?" It's a little silly, it's a little repetition of "method of doing something," it's a little warm up, it's a little excuse to show them the video how animals eat their food.
You could also do what I did later in the day when the tech refused to work: put up one of those pictures as a Zoom background* and as the kids came in, they typed in the chat box answering the question quod hoc monstrum agit quo and then qui est modus edendi huius monstri?
We then took a quick brain break: I had them act out the modus edendi of a variety of entertaining things: a hippopotamus, an eagle, a unicorn. One of my juniors does a solid eagle impression.
Then I show them the video how animals eat their food. I'm treating this like a movie talk. Before each animal, we'll talk about what its home is, its enemy, what it always does, what it never does, is it a bad animal or a good one, what do they think its modus edendi is, what about its modus pugnandi, is it as tall as a tree, what delectat it or non delectat it. Then we'll watch that animal. Friends, this video is hilarious, and if you've never had the opportunity to watch it, I encourage you to.
Then they get to log off. Our school encourages us to give them independent work a few times a week for a decent chunk of the class period. On this occasion, the kids will come up with two animals or monsters of their own and do a flipgrid. For each animal, they'll tell me "hoc monstrum/animal____________ vocatur," "[animalis/monstri] modus edendi/saltandi/pugnandi/dormiendi est ________________" and one other fact about the monster that includes one of our new words or phrases. Then they will demonstrate the animalis/monstri modus edendi (or its method of doing something else). If they don't feel comfortable doing that (as some won't), they're more than welcome to use a stuffed animal to do that. This will be their speaking assessment for the unit. It takes me less than two minutes per sudent to grade, if a child misses it, it's very easy to make up, and they can watch each other's examples for input and repetition, which is nice.
I ask the kids to also shoot me an email if they want their video kept private so I can make sure that one doesn't get watched the next day.
*in creating Zoom backgrounds, I've found it useful to copy and paste pictures into word documents and use the snipping tool to cut them out PLUS a wide boarder. If you don't include the border, there's a good chance the picture will get cut off and the kids whon't see the whole thing.
Tuesday
First, we did a word cloud. (Andrew, thank you for flippity...) I used flippity.com to create a word cloud, which I screen shared with them. Then I gave them an English word (if we'd been in the classroom, a picture would have been good, too, but switching back and forth between picture and cloud is hard on them). They typed the Latin word in the chat box. Then a couple kids took turns being "me" and telling the others what to find. Then I typed some sentences in the chat box with a blank in them and asked them to choose a word from the word cloud that they felt completed the sentence. Some gems:
Mater mea necata est; itaque me lavo.
Inimicus meus me vexat, et nunc eum accendo.
Fratrem meum traho.
Then they went to flipgrid and watched some of each other's videos. I gave them a notes sheet to make observations about the videos, like who did what animal, what is one fact about that animal, etc. They were to watch as many as they could in fifteen minutes and make notes on them, as well as answering the last two questions.
Then we came back together to discuss the videos and the questions. The word decet is going to come up a lot in Lucia. So I get to use this opportunity to ask whether it decet animals to do those things, whether it decet the kids to do those things, etc.
Wednesday
Today I've got sophomores in my room, and the rest still online. The corporeal people are on a five second delay in terms of responding, because they don't have to type. It's amazing to see how much more participatory they are once they get back into the classrooom. I'm not surprised, but it's a little wild.
After our 'morning routine,' we did a quick warm-up by looking at some disembodied animal body parts, and the kids told me either voce or in the chatbox whose what it was. It was a nice quick review and took under five minutes.
Then I asked them to take one minute to think silently about what decet agere, and while they thought, I listed things that me decet agere. I asked several kids what they decet agere and learned that B thinks decet in lecto comedere; mater irascitur, sed B flocci facit. :D
The next part feels like a non-sequitur, but it's a bridge:
We looked at this PowerPoint, which is pretty intentionally arranged. For each picture, we at minimum discussed whether the person in the picture was a monstrum, animal, or heros. The first few are supposed to be "clear." And they did: they identified Theseus as a hero, no hesitation; they identified Sully as a monster, no hesitation. Where possible, we discussed further: we knew the hero in one was Odysseus, and a couple kids knew his Latin name was Ulixes. Some kids knew what the Sirens were and what they did.
As we got deeper in, we were seeing "et monstrum et animal," they dithered about what Pegasus was a little, and there was "et heros et monstrum" for Perseus. We talked briefly about whose head that is, and whether it changed their vote. For some it did. For others it didn't. Then we got to the snake. The snake was an animal. Then the hydra is right after it, and they all said monstrum. Which is great: they fell into my trap. I asked why is the snake an animal, but the hydra is a monstrum. We started with quod necat. Then someone said, python necat. Then we made it to hydra necare conatur. Hydrae capita infinita sunt. Hydra capita facit, et serpens modo uno capit instructus est. Hydra ingenii pravi est. Good. They're thinking. The poison dart frog is last, and it's a probem. The poison dart frog necare conatur. Why isn't it a monster? We're still stumped on that. We'll come back to it.
Then I gave them five minutes in breakout rooms, which I assembled manually. As I assembled them, I told one kid in each group what question I wanted them to answer: quid decet monstrum agere, quid decet heroem agere, or quid decet animal agere?
They went into their breakout rooms, discussed, and wrote notes. Tomorrow, they'll bring those notes to class, and we'll talk about what they think.
Thursday - Friday
They'll bring their notes from yesterday to class. We will make three lists: one for hero, one for animal, one for monster. Then we'll see if we can collage a definition for monstrum and also for heros. (my longterm goal is to overturn this definition and/or challenge their perspective on monsters vs heroes. I suspect "malum" will come up somewhere in here, and I want them to look at that, and at Lucia, critically.)
I have written short texts about: -what happened to Medusa -Perseus, who I'm not convinced killed Medusa for a good reason -some bad stuff Hercules did -Cerberus, who never hurt a fly
I've provided them with links to all the stories, which they'll read together. They can choose to read the stories in any order. Here's how I am having them do it:
-they'll be in breakout rooms, three kids to a room. A person, B person, C person.
-Whoever wants to start will read the first sentence of whatever text they've chosen to read. Then they will stop after that sentence.
-The, the A person will ask the group intellegitisne? If so, the A person will choose a phrase/word from that sentence to ask the group quid significat? The B person will then draw everything that happened in that sentence. The C person will then summarize everything that's gone on in the story so far. At the beginning of the story, that'll be short. By the end, it'll be longish. They're getting a constant no pressure refresher on what's going on.
-Someone else will read the next sentence, and A/B/C will repeat their whole rigmarole. They'll do this until they finish the story.
-They will then work together to prepare and practice a three-sentence summary of the story. When they're ready, they'll call me in (zoom lets you summon the teacher/host!), and they'll summarize for me. When I've okayed it, they'll move on to the next story. I fully expect this to take through Friday.