SELECTIO SCRIPTORUM SECUNDA

Why can't life be this awesome?

a1.       Legionary

o   By Philip Matyszak

o   Suggested reading level: Grade 12 and up

o   An amusing and informative book written as an in-character “unofficial guidebook” for the prospective recruit into the Roman military on the cusp of the emperor Trajan’s war with the Dacian kingdom of Decabulus. It is full of characterful, and helpful, gems, from how to survive being stationed on the Rhine frontier to how to avoid the wrath of one’s centurion

2.       Strategikon

o   By Flavius Mauricius Tiberius Augustus, aka Maurice

o   Suggested reading level: Grade 9

o   Maurice was a soldier emperor in the twilight of the Roman Empire (reigned from 582-602). His Strategikon has been praised in military circles as the only piece of sophisticated combined arms theory until World War II. Nothing military escapes the emperor’s notice: From how infantry and cavalry should be equipped, to how to march through friendly and enemy territory to tactics for the foes of the day, to diagrams of how to deploy what forces on certain types of terrain.

3.       Legions of Rome

o   By Stephen Dando-Collins

o   Suggested reading level: Grade 9

o   This book lives up to its subtitle; it certainly is a “definitive history of every imperial Roman legion.” This later distinction is important, as in the Republic (and final round of civil wars), there were dozens of non-permanent legions marching hither and yon. There are a few colored plates with each legion’s colors and heraldic devises, and the later third of the book is dedicated to important battles of the Imperial period (roughly 30 BC to 476 AD, for the West).

4.       Rome and the Enemy

o   By Susan P. Mattern

o   Suggested reading level: Advanced students/Teachers (F-K score: 15)

o   As helpfully stated on the back, this book is a look at the military policy of the Roman Empire during its height (from Augustus to Hadrian). There are chapters on decision makers of the Empire (re: The emperor and the Senate for the most part), how they viewed the world (and geography), general strategy (grand and otherwise), expenditures and sources of income and state values.

5.       An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Uniforms of the Roman World

o   By Kevin F. Kilney

o   Suggested reading level: 11^th Grade

o   A very readable and visually stimulating book about, well, the uniforms (and equipment) of the Roman military: Legions, Auxilia, Navy, later Empire, Byzantine soldiery and Rome’s enemies.

6.       De Bello Gallico

o   By Gaius Julius Caesar

o   Grade level: Advanced students (F-K score 14)

o   A first-hand account of a Roman army out and about in modern-day France. Also of interest are Caesar’s observations of Gallic society and religion. The escapades of the centurions are particularly amusing, especially the impromptu “man-off” between Lucius Vorenius and Titus Pullo while the Nervii are meeting with surprising success in burning down the camp of Cicero’s younger brother.

7.       The Roman Army: A Sourcebook

o   By Brian Campbell

o   Grade level: Advanced students (F-K score of 13)

o   This is a rather dense book, but has an impressive collection of primary sources ranging from literary to epigraphs, papyrus  records found from Egypt to archaeological evidence showing the Roman military at war, and at peace. Each section of the book is themed, with an introduction before jumping into the primary sources.

8.       Europa Barbarorum (http://www.europabarbarorum.com/factions_romani.html)

o   Grade level: 11

o   This is the factional section for the Roman nation in the Rome: Total War modification, Europa Barbarorum. It features a short history of the Romans, an in-character description of their starting position on turn 1 of the game, and (most important to my purposes), pictures and descriptions of the sorts of soldiers which one can fill out the legions with. The information is highly reliable, as the mod team boasts a number of historians and the odd professor among its members.

9.       http://www.the-romans.co.uk/legion.htm

o   By Anthony Kamm

o   Grade level: 11^th

o   A companion website to a textbook of the same name, this site covers a variety of topics, from the origins of the Roman body politic through the reign of Domitian. There are also sections on culture, and (surprise) the army. The section on the army is rather scant, but does describe the organization and support staff of the legion adequately.

10.   http://www.caerleon.net/history/army/page2.html

o   Grade level: 9^th

o   An English village’s website, which is sited nearly atop a Roman fort and one of the possible strongholds of the historic Arthur. There are a number of good images and short descriptions (and pictures) of legionary gear. But the village has a very good relationship with a nearby re-enactment legion, who have a number of clips hosted on the site.

11.   http://www.dariusdomain.com/v_legio/v-legio-main.htm

o   Grade level : 10^th

o   A semi-interactive website where a student can click on a legionary and find out a bit more about parts of his equipment: Not just combat gear, but the camp/day-to-day items as well. The officers and specialist are also described (and pictured) and there is a succinct section on the organization of the legion, too.

12.   http://www.legionsix.org/Equipment/equipment.htm

o   By Legio VI Victris et Legio IX Hispana

o   Grade level: 10

o   A website run by a pair of modern-day legions, who to put not too fine a point on it, really know their gear (as they make it as close to historical specifications as they can). Lots of pictures, which are always a plus.

13.   De Re Militari (http://www.digitalattic.org/home/war/vegetius/index.php#b100)

o   By Flavius Vegetius Renatus

o   Grade level: Advanced students (F-K score of 13)

o   Written in the dark years of the Western Roman Empire, Vegetius wrote on very similar subjects as the emperor Maurice would approximately two to three centuries later. While both men lived in challenging times, Vegetius makes particularly bold claims, like the reason for the decay of the troops in his day is because they’re far too weak to wear armor. His section on how to deal with elephants and chariots is a surprising, yet amusing, addition.

14.   http://www.romanarmy.net/index.shtml

o   By Roman Military Research Society

o   Grade level: Teachers, advanced students (F-K score of 18)

o   Another reenactment group’s website, with a smattering of information about the onset of the Dark Ages, Roman army of different eras and surprisingly helpful hints on how to manufacture chainmail and segmentata.

15.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_fpOUQcAac and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvIvOgMkLIQ

o   By the Sega Corporation

o   Ages 13 and up

o   Featuring BRIAN BLESSED, these videos show off re-constructed legionary equipment. Quite informative (and ever-helpful re-enactors to boot) and BRIAN BLESSED. Equal parts amusing and educational. Go watch them. Right now.

Text Set 2 Subject

My next text set will be on the Roman Legion(s).

Building More Effective Student Skills

Both of the week's readings had enormously helpful titles, and got me tuned in on exactly what I should be looking for in them.

The Sinatra article, however, did not seem terribly useful in my particular field. There was (is) a trove of good information in it, such as making sure to discuss text organizational patterns before, during or after reading something and the benefits which that will confer on students, but in the Latin classroom, we just don’t do that much “deep” reading. Of the six major patterns identified by the author, I could see the Compare/Contrast (aka the not-Venn Diagram) be used the most for grammatical differences between English and Latin or comparing contemporary culture/politics to those back in the day, so to speak. The Persuasion Map wouldn’t get much use until Latin 3 at the earliest, but most likely Latin IV, when the class has reached the grammatical mountain top and is fully capable of handling authentic Latin.

This was the first image I got after Google image searching "Authentic Latin"
Vae.

In the BBR reading, we found a list of strategies to build Study Skills. Once again, I found them all quite interesting, but (again) of rather limited use in my field. The PLAE method, however, is the exception. It is primarily a self-management strategy and as such, is very general and applicable in not only the academic realm, but real life as well (illustrated quite ably by the example of asking oneself if they have everything which they need before leaving home for the day). The RAFT could be quite useful in a “simulation,” so to speak, where students assume the roles of Romans and are assigned a dilemma/historic event on which to remark upon (which was a staple of Roman higher education, actually) and be a break from the centuries-old direct grammatical instruction.

Millennials: What to make of them? And why does spellcheck hate that word?

I'll up and admit that I had a number of issues with my ISP when I tried to sit down and listen to the vodcast (?) and that may have colored my perceptions a tad.

The title of this video did not leave much ground for compromise (Millennials: Dumbest or next greatest generation?). And, well, I am one. The format was a fairly standard debate between two authors, Mark Bauerlain and Neil Howe, taking the Dumbest and Promising positions respectively.

After a brief introduction by the moderator, Bauerlain went first. I was quite surprised that, after railing about the failings of this generation at the very start of his talk for several minutes, that he didn't catch fire due to the sheer hypocrisy at his utter ineptness at speaking well before a crowd. His performance was rambling and borderline incoherent at the start. Bauerlain consistently assigned any and all blame for perceived failings in "intellectual habits and achievements" on the generation. Apparently those who have gone before them, run and design the evaluation metrics, school curricula and such are figures who have manifested straight from Plato's Realm of Ideal Forms, and us base and flawed things just cannot measure up to these pure beings.

Fault was also found with the Millennial generation using the tools of the digital age for their own amusements, and not for personal growth or enrichment. Unlike what his generation would have done if presented with the same tools. No siree, not a chance that would happen.

Having sit through that meandering, and in my opinion, libelous presentation, I was pleased to hear a measured, reasonable rejoinder by Neil Howe. The Millennials have a noticeable increase in civic/public spirt, closing values gaps with their parents and get along better with their parents than previous generations. According to Bauerlain, those dang kids these days are completely consumed with social networking on the "MyBook" and the latest installment Sportsball games on the Nintendo PlayBox.

Howe also employed a number of fairly convincing statistics that each generation gets smarter than previous ones, bit by bit (with a noticeable exception for later boomers/ early X'ers). I was not entirely sold by his claim near the end of his presentation that the parallels between the Millennial and Greatest generations were very obvious, but he at least did not try and make a claim and have it both ways, as Bauerlain did.

Now, what does this all mean for me in the classroom?

I'm going to have to be more flexible/adaptive than those who have gone before me. Short of a massive resurgence of Luddism, the grid going down and other Mad Max-style unpleasantness, technology is here to stay, and it's going to continue to disseminate further and further into human beings' personal lives. As much as I may not want to, I'm going to have to plan to change with how "kids those days" learn.

And if I ever turn into the sort of smug...sort that Mark Bauerlain is, well, I hope that transformation is short lived.

Mark Bauerlain, you make me want to make you experience a number of verses from the collected works of Catullus, Martial and Juvenal.

Web Resource 2: ORBIS

My second web resource is ORBIS.

ORBIS is, in essence, Google Maps of the ancient world. If you've ever wondered how long it (and expensive) it would be to get from Gades in Lusitania to Constantinople in Thrace, this is the resource for you! The interface is fairly basic, but takes a bit of time to familiarize oneself with. But after that brief learning period is done, you can get a very good idea of travel in the ancient world. You are not limited to the quickest route; you can also choose the shortest and cheapest (and fast does not necessarily equal shortest, as I discovered with my example above).

As far as I can tell, any student who can work MapQuest or a similar program can work the basics of ORBIS. It is very school friendly, although I cannot say if web filters would find something to block it for.

Now, in bullet form:

Pro's

• Free to use
• No sign in necessary
• Little adult supervision
• Fairly straight-forward interface
• Good tie-in with geography
• Potential cross-curricular with economics
• Surprisingly deatiled information about travel

Con's

• Site is easy to learn, but takes a bit of familiarization to truly master
• Servers have gone down and stayed down for a few days in the past

Common Core thoughts

You would, to quote some of my friends across the pond, have to be quite daft to claim that there is no political element to resistance to the Common Core State Standards regime. But what truly baffles me (I like to think I can be a semi-detached observer to all this, given that world languages aren’t touched by this program…yet, at least) is that the Common Core partisans apparently did not see this pushback coming.

I may be totally off-base here, but the last big national-level educational measure, No Child Left Behind, while well-intentioned, possessed some very noteworthy flaws, most infamously the “100% proficiency” benchmark, which resulted in standards being lowered to help push students over the threshold so that states could continue to get that hot, nasty federal largess poured all over them. This system-gaming resulted in a not-inconsiderable number of people being rather displeased.

Now we have the Common Core crew seemingly shocked, simply shocked, that their (admittedly bottom-up and elective) national program to align curricular goals is stimulating the pitchfork and torch sectors, so to speak. I have seen the, shall we say, discomfort, which Common Core has caused at the in-service meetings that I attended at my placement school with the new emphasis on following student’s reasoning, rather than if they got a correct answer or not.

In fact, the article made me think of this image, which I shall attach below.

I'd say "RMFH," or "Read more freaking history"

SELECTIO SCRIPTORVM

Websites

• http://www.roman-empire.net/founding/found-index.html

Reading level: 9^th grade and above.

This is a massive website, with sections going from the mythical founding of Rome all the way through the fall of the western half and a short section on the east/Byzantium. The interface is a bit dated, but it works well. An excellent reference if you know the time period for something/one.

• http://www.unrv.com/

Reading level: 9^th grade and above.

Another website; this one covers a wide variety of topics as well. Its sections on daily life are quite good and to the point. The site also features a forum (to use at one’s own peril) and has prominent links to reviews of Rome-related media.

• http://www.roman-emperors.org/

Reading level: 10^th

This is an older, but impressively detailed website with biographical sections on every Roman (and Byzantine) emperor and usurper from Augustus to Constantine XI. The biographies feature hyperlinks to other important figures in each emperor’s life and to sources used for the article if one wishes to see what the sources say. The list can be viewed chronologically and alphabetically, if you are looking for someone but cannot remember what number he was.

• http://quizlet.com/12674180/roman-emperors-flash-cards/

Grade: 9^th and up

A short deck of flashcards with the basics about the first 13 emperors (Augustus to Marcus Aurelius, typically the end of Roman history in most social studies classes). All the features and ease of use we all know and love that Quizlet has.

Books (Print and Electronic)

• http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gibbon/

Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Reading level: Teachers, gifted/advanced students

This is the big one. A meticulously (if biased) account of the twilight years of the Western Roman Empire and at the same time the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire. Gibbon made extensive use of primary sources and used secondary ones with the greatest of reluctance. The text is difficult, but phenomenally rewarding. The link is to an electronic (and stable) version of the entire text. All six volumes of it.

• Mithridates the Great: Rome’s Indomitable Enemy

Philip Matyszak

Reading level: 9^th grade and above

This is a very engaging and informative work about a disappointingly obscure eastern king (who came far closer to checking Rome than one would initially believe), the life of whom, in the words of the author, reads like, “an overblown film script of the 1950s.” There are illustrations and maps of battles and maneuverings, so you do not need to be an expert on Anatolian and Aegean geography to understand what is going on.

• The Lives of the Twelve Caesars

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus

Reading level: 10^th grade

If one wants to understand the Roman Empire, one must understand the Roman emperors. And Suetonius, who was the personal secretary of the emperor Hadrian, had easy access to the imperial archives for primary sources and eye-witness accounts. Again, some of the Latin words (which just don’t translate) can be off-putting, but it is a highly interesting and engaging read. While racy at times, few histories give such detailed accounts of humanizing characteristics, like personal habits and appearances of Julius Caesar and the first eleven emperors.

• The Annals

Cornelius Tacitus

Reading level:  11^th

A contemporary of Suetonius, Tacitus’s surviving work covers the period from the beginning of the reign of Tiberius to the year 68 AD.  Tacitus, while occasionally bitter and quite pessimistic, is widely considered one of the greatest Roman historians and his year-by-year approach is highly informative.

• The Histories

Cornelius Tacitus

Reading level: 11^th

Another work by the same author, with all the bitter pessimism and bemoaning the fallen state of men in his day. This work covers the suicide of Nero through the rise of Vespasian (which was roughly a year, but what a year it was).

• The Romans for Dummies

Guy de la Bedoyere

Reading level: 9^th

This is an easy-to-read overview of all of Roman history. It has plenty of diagrams and side-bars, not to mention sub-section headers so you can make a reasonable guess as to what it is you’ll be reading if you go further (for example, not everyone may find the history of the grain supply of Rome to be as enthralling as I).

• Greece and Rome: Builders of Our World

The National Geographic Society

Reading level: 9^th

This book has chapters on the Greeks, Carthaginians, Etruscans and Romans. The text is lively and engaging (although a bit dated) and there are numerous, and excellent, illustrations and photographs of the modern state of ancient sites.

• The Jewish War

Titus Flavius Josephus, aka Joseph ben Matityahu

An account of the war which helped propel Vespasian to the throne, Josephus, a leader in the Jewish revolt, managed to ingratiate himself to his enemy, and later patron, by telling (and convincing) the future emperor that the messianic prophecies in 1^st century Judaism were actually about Vespasian becoming emperor. As he was on both sides of the war, and stepped in both cultures, this is a fascinating (if somewhat biased) work.

• History of the Later Roman Empire

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/BURLAT/

John Bagnal Bury

Grade: 12^th

An older, but detailed work about the later part of the Roman empire, from the time of Stilicho (395 AD) to Justinian (565 AD). It also discusses the religious sentiments of the era, the Romans’ neighbors, and the shifting barbarian kingdoms that established themselves in Spain, France, Africa and Italy. I particularly enjoyed the section on the Nika Riot, when a massive mob of dissatisfied chariot fans nearly brought down the empire.

• Ab Urbe Condite (History of Rome)

Titus Livius Patavinus

Grade: 11^th

You cannot discuss the history of Rome without Livy. While he is a fan of impressively long sentences, and many of his translations tend to use polysyllabic words, his texts is engaging and quite comprehensive, covering the span of history from the mythical founding of Rome to the Roman conquest of the eastern Mediterranean. Unfortunately, we are missing the vast majority of his work, but what remains is a treasure.

• Letters of Pliny the Younger

Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus

Grade: 10^th

Pliny the Younger and his correspondences are a very humanizing body of work. Some are more difficult to read than others, and the correspondence with the emperor Trajan are hilariously flattering (all the more so because Trajan was not the sort of man to demand the fawning deference Pliny shows him). Of particular interest are the letters which Pliny wrote to Tacitus upon receiving the historian’s request (letters six and sixteen of the sixth volume) for an eye-witness account of Vesuvius’s eruption.

Teaching *English* Vocabulary

I found the Bromley article not only interesting, but infinitely more useful (and engaging) than the Bauman & Graves piece.

As an aspiring foreign language teacher, I'm going to end up teaching a good-sized chunk of English grammar alongside Latin. And these vocabulary-building strategies can easily be adapted to a Latin class (although there is still a place for vocab quizzes, or at the very least, I can’t bring myself to jettison them).

Fortunately for me, I’ll be all over the advice to teach students Greek and Latin roots of English words and that strategy (unsurprisingly) will do double duty as knowing Latin roots really helps one build up and strengthen Latin vocabulary. And, as if the roots weren’t enough, Latin will help students get used to a word having multiple meanings. My favorite example is the verb “aggredior” which can mean “advance to,” or “address” or “run up and stab” depending on the context in which it is used. Or, if that does not help students grow accustomed to words having multiple contextual meanings, it will show them that they cannot escape that phenomenon and had best get used to it.

The mention of “vocabulary notebooks” is particularly intriguing and one which I will have to experiment with. It sounds far more interesting than a deck of flashcards or a series of notes sprinkled about the notebook between bits of grammar and practice exercises.

Vocabulary and ways to build it

It is almost impossible to understand a passage if one cannot understand at least 95% of the words in it. This is true for all subjects, not just English. Fortunately, the readings which I did for this week list and describe a number of strategies which the enterprising educator can implement to aid their students.

Having said that, let us look at my favorite.

The first strategy described in the textbook (and a very similar one was buried near the end of the article) was the “Personal Glossary.” This is quite similar to the standard deck of flash cards which I remember seeing when I was a wide-eyed high schooler years ago; when an unknown word is found, it is written down on something (ideally an index card or something similarly shaped) on one side. On the other is a simplified definition (essentially what you’d find in the dictionary, sans the pronunciation and syllable indication) and an example sentence.

This handy little technique will work with anything which has text and a teacher can add a bit of guidance by “suggesting” certain words be added to the students’ growing glossaries. The fact that most of the work will be done by the students is a happy occurrence.

The Etymologia and Morphologia techniques are almost certain to get use in my classroom; I distinctly remember one of my professors telling us that the verb insulto which means “to be insolent, scoff, revile, abuse, taunt, insult” literally means “to jump up and down, blowing raspberries.” Whereas morphology is far more reliable in Latin, as you can reliably guess the meaning of a word if you know what its morphemes mean (a fossilized language does wonders for nailing down definitions).

Clever and Original TItle

Another week, another set of readings and another posting done after my Sunday morning activities.

First, I'll get the unpleasantness out of the way: The best thing about the BBR article, once again, was that it was short. That will be all which I shall say about that.

Next, is our Daniels and Zimmerman chapter. This, unsurprisingly, was more helpful, although it did echo a good bit of what we saw in Torvani last week (and even cited it, too). Of particular interest to me was that students tend to have trouble visualizing what they read. This typically shows up in math and science (according to our readings), but also in other subjects, like Latin. For instance, if you were to look at one of the (depressingly brief) readings on the Roman legions in the textbook, you'd see depressingly short description stating that a legionary wore iron armor made out of "banded strips," with a short sword and large shield.

Take a moment to picture that.

Now, look at these fellows:

Get some, Germans

This plays into another thing which I found quite helpful in Daniels and Zimmerman, and that's something I found between the lines, so to speak (and something which I struggle with): Avoid jargon/strange new words. I love big, borderline incomprehensible words. My students, however, do not. If they can't follow you, or visualize what you're saying/talking about, they're lost. And lost students do not learn.

Building Anticipation and Comprehension

I started with the BBR text this weekend, and I'll briefly sum up my thoughts on that chapter: Seen it already. It seems like I actively try and tear on this text, and I most assuredly did not have that in my mind this weekend. The primary 'new' thing which I took away from all the "comprehension builders" was the doodle diagram, which works quite similarly to a Venn diagram, except drawings are used in place of circles. And I don't see myself making use of these, given that I can't draw to save my life and would sooner translate Tacitus again than try and produce a sketch.

Torvani 6 can best be summed up as "provoke controversy and model for students." Not that there's anything wrong with that, but much of the chapter felt like, well, fluff to me. Having said that, the description of how to deal with recalcitrant struggling readers was quite helpful, and something which I jotted down to put in my folder of good ideas I intend steal from others.

Torvani 5 I summarized with a fun little phrase coined by Augustus: Fetina Lente, or "make haste slowly." Students tend to equate "reading quickly" with "reading well" and are loathe to do anything that will slow down their pace. Teachers also tend to have problems with turning into experts in their field. This usually means that the more we know, the harder and harder it is to decide what is worthwhile enough to be covered in class and what should be "secondary" material. That said, this may not be as big a problem for classical language teachers as it is for others, as our end of course exams tend to be either a passage to translate for accuracy or a large grammar test. And, as I've doubtlessly said dozens of times before, Latin builds off of what you learned earlier. For instance, if you can't keep your endings straight, your chances of reading a short passage are not good.

No relation to anything

Textbooks and Non-fiction

I'll up and admit that I found chapter 4 of Daniels and Zemelman to be a slog. The initial part of it was useful, but really wasn't anything I hadn't seen before (then again, I looked at the articles before reading the chapters, so that quite likely colored my opinion of the chapter in question), and the list of suggested classroom library materials, while quite lengthy and an excellent jumping-off point for most areas, did not really have much to offer the foreign language teacher (with the possible exception of Guns, Germs and Steel).

Chapter 3 of Daniels and Zemelman was, in my opinion, more engaging, although I quickly grew tired of the "Textbooks are bad, and here's why" tone of the chapter. They did offer suggestions for how to fix the problem, but I feel that they could have achieved their purpose with a tenth of the words used had they employed some Tacitean brevity.

The articles, unlike the text chapters, did give me two "Ah-ha!" moments. Allen provided some very good evidence that read-aloud time is not something for younger students, but can be successfully used in secondary classrooms. And Harvey had an an excellent quote (Which in essence is, "The primary purpose of education is to enhance understanding) and detailed the creation of "Wonder Books," which are a question log, which will hopefully spur students to seek answers to those questions and/or give the instructor items to work into lessons that will be of greater interest to students.

Tangentially, the readings featured a book called "The Year 1000" and didn't mention Emperor Basil II the Bulgar-Slayer, who really spiced up that time period.

Text Structure and Access

I don't mean to start off on a sour note, but I summed up the majority of the first chapter of BBR as, "standard introductory tripe." The only noteworthy thing in the entire passage was the list on page 27, which had already been covered in greater depth by our other readings.

Moving over to the D&Z selections, we were first shown that the authors' definition of "strategy" could mean one of four different things, which is not something that English usually permits its vocabulary words to do. Once I got past that initial moment of disequilibrium (and wondered why they didn't tidy that up with different terms for each definition), the authors gave us a veritable avalanche of reading strategies for student use before, during and after reading assignments. I was particularly interested in the Anticipation Guide, RAFT and Dramatic Role-playing. How I'll manage to work those into a foreign language classroom on most days, I know not. But I'm aware of them now, and can be pondering it.


The second D&Z chapter on making text readings more accessible flowed quite nicely after the first one (how to help students read them). The main take-away I had was that educators are often under great pressure to cover "everything," but we have nowhere near enough time for that. The primary work-around to the issue is the identification of "fenceposts" which are the biggest, most important ideas and concepts and hit those hard and thoroughly. I can see this being of more use in a history or literature class than a foreign language, or at least in my Latin class. If I had to use a visual metaphor, I would say Latin is more akin to a tower; nearly everything builds off of the first few concepts learned at the beginning of study.

Web Resource: Numen

Numen is a very, very handy electronic Latin word-study tool and dictionary. And as an added plus, it is completely work-safe. I would say any student who is capable of working an internet browser with a degree of competence is capable of using it. This, unsurprisingly, will be quite helpful to Latin students, although I would prefer to 'hide' it until students reach Latin III (as the dictionary will not only give you the word's definition, the principle parts, it also gives textual citations for where the word is found and has an option to show every single form...which is something Latin I's and II's do not need to see so soon). You can enter up to 50,000 words into the word study tool at a time, which will then give you the definitions and parts. It also features a handy little English -> Latin tool, which only allows one word at a time, but does give a multiplicity of definitions for your word you want to see in Latin. For those who miss how things used to be, there is an 'old-style,' browse-by-letter dictionary function as well.

It has an option to create an account (which is free), and upon registering, you can create decks of electronic flash cards with words you've looked up to drill yourself with. This, unsurprisingly, is very handy.

The site is not very commercial at all, with no advertisements that I noticed. On the whole, the site is quite easy to navigate, but it has been rather unresponsive at times recently (possibly linked to server issues, or just my ISP being distinctly unhelpful).

I would say there is no adult supervision needed, beyond monitoring students to keep them from typing dirty words into the English -> Latin tool and learning some words that they don't need to know.

Post Secunuds: Types of readings, text sets, and proses

Rather unsurprisingly for a book about teaching teaching reading skills, chapters 3 & 4 of the Torvani text were about cultivating reading understanding (holy verbals, Batman!) in students. Torvani's third chapter touched a bit on Gardener's multiple "intelligences" (quotations because I'm obdurate when it comes to redefining words) with the writer's observation of how vocational instructors may not be able to easily read a passage of, say, Shakespeare, and comprehend it as easily as an English teacher can, but they can quite easily take a technical text and build a model/determine if their components are usable whereas someone like me would be hopelessly outmatched. Torvani managed to get the vocational teacher to (after a bit of Socratic prodding) describe how he went about reading and thinking about what he read. This mental modeling is an invaluable skill to have, as we (hopefully, after we get licensed and all that) will be experts in our fields -to some degree- and will have long since internalized how we go about solving problems in our fields. If we model what we did when we were in our students' shoes years and years ago, we will be able to more effectively train them how to tackle problems (academic) in our classrooms. This will also humanize us, as to most students, which will hopefully build up a friendly rapport.

Or a respectful one at least, as I cannot help but think of Tiberus' quote, "Oderint, dum probent," or "Let them hate me, so long as they respect me."

The fourth chapter of the text followed along with the "theme" of the previous one, but focused on finding alternatives to textbooks. I can get behind this in some content areas, but the creation of "text sets" does not seem to lend itself very well to Latin. Or at least the grammatical parts of it. I can find stuff about culture, mythology, history, etc, but short of pulling introductory-level materials from a variety of other Latin textbooks, it seems that my work will be cut out for me with finding alternatives to the "hardest" part; the linguistic stuff.

Looping back to the initial part of Torvani's fourth chapter, Bakken and Whedon's short piece on the problems students have with textbooks was one of these-type moments for me. Students learn how to read a certain type of text, get confident and then are punted at textbooks (which have an entirely different style, more often than not) with no training and we wonder why they get burnt out on reading. This is something for us language teachers to keep in mind, as I doubt any textbook will have a narrative-style lesson or chapter explaining what an indirect object is and how it is used. Having thought about it for a little bit, however, this may be dealt with as simply as making sure to identify three 'steps' in learning a new bit of grammar: Identification, formation, and then translation; corresponding to the introduction, action and conclusion of a story.

The jury's still out on how to make that exciting, though.

First Post: Ch7 and associated readings

The first chapter in our text was about building a "Community of Learners," a term which I used to roll my eyes at as it initially struck me as something of a buzz-phrase (and then I discovered it was essentially what I want to do in a classroom, and quickly revised my opinion).

I enjoyed the apology about starting the chapter about starting with research, as to be perfectly honest, I feel that we could crack the most hardened of terrorists and other similar malefactors by sitting them down and forcing them to read academic research papers. Having said all that, the biggest thing which I took away from the chapter is that the social cognitive theory works. Seeing as my CSEL could have been summed up as, "SCT is awesome and everyone should use it," I was quite contented.

Finding ways to link readings/what is learned in the class and connecting to my students were two more items I took away. I try and do the later (asking about things going on out of class, small talking when appropriate, and such) but the former is a bit problematic in early Latin classes, as most extant authors (if not all) require a student to go through Latin III at the least to understand, and reading inscriptions are something which even I have trouble with, given how condensed the accursed things can be. The chapter suggested working in mistakes intentionally, as well, to keep students engaged and thinking about the material in addition to showing that I'm human, just like them (which is something I've done unintentionally a few times), and reading aloud in class, which is how I prefer to do translations (I say it in Latin, student repeats, then translates).

As for the two other articles, I made note to remember to co-opt ELL's to translate questions and some answers into their native languages to help them work on their English-native tongue skills and give me excuse to do some comparative linguistics for the class, and to find ELL's a "buddy" to work with. The word gap piece, however, was something I had to slog through initially, due to my aforementioned dislike for reading academic research. It did become interesting, but it didn't really answer any questions, nor float any hypothetical solutions.

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