Story Character Instagram Posts

If you've gathered anything from reading my blog, it's that I'm not a teacher who takes things too seriously (did you notice the name of my blog?!). I've always had a cheeky and silly side (they don't call me Iohannes Lascivus for nothing!), which I love to bring to my classroom. 

In the past two weeks, my Latin II classes read a story version that I wrote based on the film Snack Attack, which I first presented as a Movie Talk (or whatever they're called nowadays, again my cheeky and snarky side coming out!). To practice with vocabulary and demonstrate their comprehension of the Latin story, students created Instagram posts for one of the two characters, the old woman (anus in Latin, yes, you read that correctly) or the young man (iuvenis in Latin). Students were required to create these Instagram posts as their chosen character's reactions to the events in the story/film. Students could also be creative and have fun by using Latin hashtags that I wrote or by giving their character a funny username (my favorites are Instagranny and Best_anus_ever). 

It is worth mentioning that I do not have an Instagram account, so the inspiration for this assignment came from my impressions of the most ridiculous of Instagram tropes (e.g. shameless self-promotion, oversharing, glorification of the mundane), but, again, I'm all for irreverence and camp. 

Here is the slideshow with the instructions and a sample created by yours truly (pardon the quality of the drawing and handwriting):

Here is the worksheet (one side for the students to create their posts and the other side with Latin hashtags that I wrote):
 
To see the worksheet in its original formatting, click here. 

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Samples of student work:

That username! 😂

Best_username_ever!

Post-Winter Break Vocabulary Recall

The holidays have come and gone, including my winter break, which consisted mostly of...

and

and

Back to reality, I always like to do some review before moving on to new material. One no-prep activity that I have loved doing (second time, as of today) is asking students to generate a list of as many words as they can remember in Latin. This is a great activity for after winter break because it gets students back into thinking in Latin and, best of all, it reminds them that they know more Latin than they think they do. This reassurance is essential for level one learners, which is why I love to do it with my Latin I classes the most. It's also great to use at the beginning of the school year with level two for many of the same reasons (which I did last year). 

Here's how I structure the activity:

• I randomly divide the class into groups of 3. (I use this website to create the groups. If you know of an even better one - let me know!) I will adjust the groups to make them more mixed by ability and gender and to prevent behavioral issues.
• Each group gets a whiteboard, a marker, and a rag.
• Each group must come up with as many Latin words as they can remember and write their list on their whiteboard.
• To add some competition, the group that remembers the highest number of words gets a prize (candy or stickers). As the day progresses, I challenge the groups to outdo not only one another but also the record set by my previous classes.
• As for timing, I will check in on the class, but most groups will need to be stopped - so this is a great activity to fill an entire class period. 
• When there are about 15 minutes left in class, I will stop the activity. Then each group will count up the number of words they remembered. The group that remembered the highest number of words will share their list aloud while I type and project it in a Google Sheets file.
• I will then share this Google Sheets file with my students as a reference.

Here are the word counts (combined from every group's list, minus duplicates of course) for my three Latin I classes today: 169, 247, and 221. 

Here is the Google Sheets file with the vocabulary lists. I have added the English meaning and additional forms for student reference.

The goal in our Latin program is for students to acquire around 100 words per semester, so I am so proud that my students have exceeded this goal! This is language acquisition in action! 😁

Timed Writes & Student Choice

Timed Writes are a great way for students to produce written output and demonstrate to us teachers and to themselves what they can do with the target language in a quantifiable manner (i.e. the time limit of the write itself and the word count that they produce). Like all forms of output, students will need to have acquired sufficient input. For this reason, I use Timed Writes as the culminating piece of units, which are either short stories or cultural topics. Normally Timed Writes take on two forms in my classes: retelling stories we have read in their own words OR writing original stories based on a given prompt. This past month I decided to mix things up.

A few weeks ago, my Latin I students completed their second Timed Write to close our unit on the basics of ancient Rome (daily life and the topography and architecture of the city). We toured the important sights like the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and the Circus Maximus; we explored how the ancient Romans met their basic needs like food, water, and - everyone's favorite - going to the bathroom; and we discussed the differences between the lives of most Romans and of the wealthy. In many Latin classes, including my own, this usually includes the differences between the two main types of Roman housing, insulae (apartment buildings) and domus (houses). We watched Magister Craft's amazing videos on both the insula and the domus, read the scripts of both videos in Latin, and looked at the remains of such structures. 

I initially planned to conclude this unit with a Timed Write that would require that students compare and contrast insulae and domus in Latin. Inspired by my Gifted endorsement course, I decided to give my students more options - especially those that would challenge my students to think beyond simply comparing and contrasting. 

This is how the week went:

Monday: I put students into groups to generate similarities and differences between insulae and domus in English and, if they so desired, in Latin. Then each group shared their lists and as a class we came up with how to word the lists in Latin, which I typed and projected simultaneously for them to copy down.

Tuesday: I presented the Timed Write prompts and students had time to choose their prompt and generate a list of Latin words/phrases that they would need to answer their prompt.

These were the prompts:

1.  Create your own Roman family and describe their living situation. What are their names and how are the family members related to one another? Do they live in an insula or in a domus? Where do they sleep? Where do they get their food from and where do they eat it? Where do they go to the bathroom? 
2. Archaeologists in Pompeii have discovered the ruins of a building and they believe that it is either an insula or a domus. You have looked over the floor plan and you know what it is, but you have to convince the archaeologists. Describe what the building is and support your argument based on what you know about Roman housing. If you argue that the building is a domus, why? Why is the building not an insula? If you argue that the building is an insula, why? Why is the building not a domus?
3. Compare and contrast living in the insula and living in the domus. How are the insula and the domus similar? In what ways are they different? Consider the following: rooms/size, food/eating, bathrooms. Make sure that your descriptions of the domus and the insula are thorough (describe all the rooms of the domus).

Wednesday - break for Halloween!

Thursday: Each student received an Essential Words worksheet, where they placed necessary Latin words in the given boxes. Students were allowed to use these worksheets during the Timed Write, provided they followed the instructions and completed them appropriately. If students had time, they wrote rough drafts of the Timed Writes and could get feedback from me.

A shorter version of the Essential Words worksheet

Friday: Day of the Timed Write! Students had 8 minutes to answer their chosen prompt in their own words in Latin in as many words as possible. 

Results: I was pleasantly surprised by the Timed Write results! The time that I allotted to students to prepare themselves was worth it. As I said above, this was only the second Timed Write that they have ever produced, so they are still learning how Timed Writes work. The Timed Writes demonstrated thought and care and were more grammatically accurate than I had expected. I was also surprised at the prompts that students chose. Since we had spent a considerable amount of time to comparing and contrasting insulae and domus, I expected most students to select the third prompt. That was not the case. The first and second prompts were more popular, the former in particular. 

Several students wrote more than 100 words. I expect a pace of about 10 words per minute for Timed Writes, but for the first semester of Latin I, I expect a more flexible range of 5-10 words per minute. My word count expectations are also lower for Free Writes because they are open-ended. The highest word count was 180 words, so that comes down to 22.5 words per minute - in less than three months of Latin! This student remarked that his hand started cramping - talk about dedication! 

After the Timed Write, I asked that students answer the following reflection questions:

1. How many words did you write?
2. What did you do well in this Timed Write?
3. With what did you struggle in this Timed Write?
4. How did your preparations help you? What did you do specifically? 
5. How would you like to improve for your next Timed Write?

Some responses reflect the students' comfort with the target language to such a degree that they focus less on the daunting task of writing in the target language and instead have ideas for improvement. Here are some of my favorites:

• "[I would like to] use/know connecting/transitional phrases/words."
• "[I would like to explicitly] learn past and present tenses."
• "I would like to write using more varieties of sentences."

Since Timed Writes are a tangible reminder to students of their proficiency and growth in the target language, I want students to take pride in their Timed Writes and find them compelling to write and read again at a later date. Hereafter I plan to continue to offer more choices for Timed Writes.