I wrote about the solid start to the year up through 55 hours of CI. We’re now at the 100 hour mark. Students have read on their own for 187 total minutes of Sustained Silent Reading (SSR), and 150 minutes of Free Voluntary Reading (FVR)…

Students read five more novellas since January: Rūfus lutulentus, Rūfus et Lūcia: līberī lutulentī, Drūsilla in Subūrā, Rūfus et arma ātra, and Rūfus et gladiātōrēs, as well as the first third of fragmenta Pīsōnis, which all totaled over 10,000 words. These provided a lot more of the text being read this semester compared to the co-created and class texts as the bulk of reading material from the fall. This makes sense according to our curriculum of beginning the year with a focus on the self, class, school, family, community (i.e. co-created, and class texts) before then exploring target culture topics (i.e. novellas, etc.).

We didn’t just abandon a focus on students, though, so there were additional simple stories, scenes, descriptions, Movie Talk stories, and Write & Discuss since January that added another 6,000. Also, there were new text packets as the result of exploring Roman topics (e.g. housing, public spaces, gladiators), adding another 1,000 words. Those figures also don’t account for chapters of various novellas read during FVR, which really lifted off since the New Year.

Therefore, from January up to April vacation, first year Latin students have read over 17,000 total words of Latin, which makes the running total for the year so far come to 37,000.

That’s a lot.

For a textbook program comparison, students read only ~6500 total words by Stage 12, and just ~14,500 by Stage 20 in the first two textbooks of the Cambridge Latin Course. Most programs take a year or two to get through that textbook material. Yet, after just 100 classes, students have been exposed to over 60% more total Latin through a textbook-free comprehension-based and communicative Latin program. bombax!