Latin I Class Notes -- Week 3 (January 30)

Greetings!

I had planned on reviewing again last week and starting into the stories in the chapters of our book, Ecce Romani.  Even though we missed class last week, I felt that we were ready to start again into our stories about Cornelia, Flavia, Marcus, Sextus, Cornelius, and Aurelia. 

We began class with some online exercises that I had posted last week.  Some students mentioned that these quick word games were a little addicting.  I know that I found myself doing them over and over again trying to beat a previous score.  (And who said Latin was dusty and boring?)

I handed out a fresh syllabus for the class. 

As a class, we worked through the story, Disaster, from Chapter 13.  We have now progressed to using the imperfect (past) tense of our verbs.  Though we are a bit rusty and had some new vocabulary, the class did a great job translating.

For our homework, I'm sending out copies of the answer key.  It seems to make sense for the students to correct their own assignments and then come back to class with any questions. 

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Vocabulary Cards for all of the new vocabulary in Chapter 13

-- Exercises 13b & 13c.

-- Read Word Study (p. 101 - 103)

-- Exercise 3

--  Chapter 13 Speed Word #1

-- Chapter 13 Matching #1

-- Chapter 13 Speed Word #2

-- Chapter 13 Matching #2

This week's blog:  Class Notes

Have a great weekend and stay warm!

Mrs. Prichard

Latin I -- "Cold Day" Homework

Greetings!

My apologies for not sending out an e-mail before this with the homework for next week.  Our family is hosting a fundraiser at our house for our son Ryan who is in Thailand with Youth with a Mission.  The past two days have been full of cleaning, baking, and jewelry making.

Firstly, a reminder of the homework that was due for this Thursday which you should bring to class next week:

Assignments due January 23:

-- 25 Vocabulary cards (bring them to class)

Since I had planned to do some more reviewing in class, the students can review some vocabulary and word endings using some online resources.  One of the best sites that I've found for quick (sometimes less than a minute) activities is the Classics page sponsored by the "Abney Website of Cosmic Proportions."  This website has multiple quizzes, exercises, activities, etc. listed for every chapter of Ecce Romani.  Before class next week, I would like the students to visit the 2 required pages, and then go to at least 3 other ones for vocabulary practice.

Assignments due January 30:

-- 25 more Vocabulary Cards (bring them to class)

-- Required online vocabulary practice (bring your scores to class)

          Word Web Spelling --- Bring your score to class
          Speed Word -- Play 3 times
-- Choose at least 3 from the list below.  Beware -- they can be a little addicting.
          Small Words Practice

          Practice Nominative, Accusative, and Ablative 

          More Practice of Nominative, Accusative, and Ablative

          Nominative and Accusative Quiz 1

          The Adventures of Sextus

          Chapter 5 Speed Word #1

          Chapter 5 Speed Word #2

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Stay warm!

Mrs. Prichard

This week's blog

Latin I Class Notes -- Week 1 (January 16)

Greetings!

Well, we're back at --- translating this ancient, dead language -- one noun and verb at a time.  We started the class with a "Scavenger Hunt," collecting nouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositional phrases from one another.  Learning languages is a challenging and puzzling activity.  Sometimes it seems that you lose all that you learned, and at other times it all comes back with amazing clarity.

This week we focused primarily on review.  As with many academic pursuits, students sometimes don't know what they don't know until they make mistakes or realize that they are completely clueless.  With that in mind, we went back to the first chapter to review and recall everything we could remember about endings, cases, conjugations, gender, declensions, etc.  Next week, we will continue with the chapters and stories about the family of Cornelius.

We discussed a few helpful ideas for going forward with Latin.  A few ideas that seemed to be good were to 1) give students the answer keys for the Ecce Romani book exercises and 2) have some online opportunities to practice with vocabulary, etc.  and 3) continue the beginning of class fun activities because they help some of the Latin to "sink in."  One problem that we had, since we only meet once a week, is that the turnaround for correcting assignments made it difficult to know when certain areas were causing problems.  With the answer key, students can correct their weekly work before bringing it to class and be ready to ask question for work they didn't understand.

I will have a syllabus for next week.  I was waiting for some input from the students before putting it together.  I now have a better idea about what will work.

Assignment for Next Week:

-- 25 flash cards (begin with chapter 12 and work forward to chapter 1)

This week's blogs

Class Notes

Week 1 Vocab Review

I'm glad to be back with this great group of students!

Have a great weekend,

Mrs. Prichard

Week 1 (January 16) Vocabulary Review

Class,
Below are some links for reviewing vocabulary.  Your Latin words are the building blocks for translating.  The better you know them, the easier the translating will be!

Tricky Little Words from Ch. 1 - 6
Spelling One
Spelling Two
Matching One
Matching Two

Have fun!

Latin I Class Notes -- December 5 (Week 14)

Greetings!

We had a good class time this week.  We started with some vocabulary practice. I lined the students up in the hallway, and they could take a step forward whenever they got a word right.  We're at the point in our language study that memorizing the Latin words and English definitions will greatly benefit their translating.

Back in the classroom, we reviewed verb endings for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th conjugations. Following that, we reviewed the endings for nouns for the different declensions and cases.  Latin is full of patterns for the endings on nouns and verbs, and those also must be memorized.  So far in this class, the focus has not been on memorizing vocabulary.  Instead, we've focused on translating sentences and putting together meanings and grammar bit by bit as we go along with each story.  Next semester, we'll not only include various grammar points, but will work on committing to memory those aspects that will help translation go more smoothly.

In lieu of a test, the students are to do all of the exercises for the Review Section, starting on page 93.  They may use their books for these.  Next week we'll correct them, and celebrate the end of the semester.  I'll be bringing treats, and the students may bring some if they like.

Assignments for Next Week

-- Review for Chapters 8 - 12 (pg. 93 +)

This week's blog:  Class Notes

See you on Thursday!

Mrs. Prichard

Latin I Class Notes -- Week 12 (November 21)

Greetings!

Again, another productive class this week.  I began the class with a short quiz that included vocabulary words, verb endings, and noun endings.  I'll be doing the occasional pop quizzes to keep them on their collective toes. 

Following the quiz, we went straight into translating the Chapter 12 story.  By this time of day, eyes glaze over a bit as we look at long sentences.  Translating Latin requires a lot of hard thinking, and this group of students are doing a great job.

I don't know what I was thinking, but I didn't give any specific assignments for next week.  We won't have school next week because we'll be eating turkey, cranberries, fruit salad, rutabaga, and pies next Thursday.  

The last two weeks of classes for this term will be spent reviewing all that we have learned so far.  I will give them a take home test at the next class.

Assignment for Dec. 5

-- Review everything

This week's blog

Class Notes

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Blessings to you!

Mrs. Prichard  

Latin I Class Notes -- Week 11 (November 14)

Greetings!

Another good class!  As I set up the projector for class, the class worked in pairs to finish a crossword puzzle from Chapter 2 (Secundus).  I could project the form onto the white board so that we could fill it out as a class.

Because we were short on time last week, we didn't cover all of the grammar notes from last week.  We covered this before going on to the next chapter's story.  The next chapter introduced us to more noun endings.  The story progresses as the Cornelius family heads for Rome, leaving Davus, along with a big stick, in charge of the farm.

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Write out the translation for Chapter 11

-- Write out the vocabulary words for this chapter

-- Write out the answers to Exercise 11b, c, & d.

-- Read page 84.

This week's blog

 -- Class Notes

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. Prichard