Abbi Holt had a great thread sharing a 6-year progression of practices that have made even teaching through a pandemic tolerable! Here it is with some commentary on why you should look into doing similar things, if not the very same…
Why This Works? #1
Not only is moving slowly and steadily a more responsive approach to teaching learners in the room, but reducing grading is crucial in carving out space for everything that positively impacts teaching and learning.
This post is not about teaching grammar. This post is about its role in comprehension. Grammar can tell you a word’s function, but what impact does that have if you’re struggling to understand what words mean?! It’s still all about words. In fact, all words contain grammar. If you know what a word means, you’re a little bit closer to acquiring its grammar each time you encounter it. In this post, I use a language I’ve made up for other demonstrations, aptly dubbed Piantagginish, to show how vocab—not grammar—is the real problem regarding comprehension. The pedagogical takeaway is to avoid vocab overload, and shelter vocab whenever possible…
Continue readingAll Of My Daily Activities, etc.
– input-based strategies & activities
If this stuff interests you, consider putting a few things in place to support the move towards a more comprehension-based and communicative approach. Here are the practices fundamental to my teaching, making the daily stuff possible:
Core Practices
CI
Grammar
Textbooks
Curriculum
Grading
Look, Listen, Ask
Course Grade
Assessments
Speaking & Writing
Continue reading for explanations of each…
Continue readingCI is not out to destroy the Classics. On the contrary, those advocating for teaching with more CI are the professions’ biggest cheerleaders, aiming to increase interest and enrollment worldwide. How? It starts with including all students.
Still included in the included, though, are those students most like us who have always thrived in conventional Latin classrooms. We can’t leave them out. At this point, I’ve had about 10 classes with students this year, which is just around the time when it becomes clear who’s really into Romans, and/or really into learning (as opposed to everything else that interests adolescents). Since a few of these students have made their presence known in my inclusive classroom, I have a plan…
Magister P. 