CAMWS 1999 Panel
Committee for the Promotion of Latin                  Classical Association of the Middle West and South  
Cleveland, OH

   A wide variety of students populates today's Latin classrooms. Students come to us with a variety of background experiences, language experience and aptitudes, learning styles and expectations. Effective teachers find out about their students and use this knowledge to guide them in choosing instructional activities and materials.
    We are all proficient in teaching content. The tougher job is matching students need with methods. Issues of gender, race learning style and learning differences all come into play in every classroom.

Please e-mail me any ideas you use along these lines. I will add them to this list and credit you with the idea!

littles@ih.k12.oh.us

I. Finding out about your students

Teachers use a variety of methods to find out about their students. These include simply things such as interacting with students before and after class, attending after school events, either extra-curricular or co-curricular, and talking with parents. Teachers may also use some kind of informational card at the beginning of the year to find out about students' previous language experience, or interests out of class.
    A few ideas which help this process:

1) Journals

     We use student journals for a variety of purposes. Listed below are some uses for journals and some writing prompts

  Journals are kept in the classroom, and students typically write in journals for a brief time (5 minutes) at the start of class ro after a quiz. Teachers always read every student journal, and write brief comments.

The journals allow students to dialogue with teachers in a structured way. This also guarantees that every student interacts in some way.

Goal Setting - at the beginning of the year, students set their own goals. It may be anything they wish, from personal goals (I want to be more organized, I want to keep up with assignments), to class goals (I will come in for help, I want to review vocabulary), to competitive goals (National Exam scores, state or national convention placing). Periodically during the year, we have the students look at the goals and reflect on how well they have worked to meeting those goals. They are always invited to
revise the goals. The teachers also model the idea of goal setting.

Learning Style - students are asked at the beginning of the year to describe to the teacher their preferred learning style. They are prompted to discuss what works for them and what doesn't work for them. After a few weeks of class, students are asked to talk about the types of activities they liked or didn't like.

Study Skills - Teachers discuss with students various study strategies and structure activities to model these study skills (flash cards, practice tests, studying with partner, audio tape). Students are asked to discuss which study skill worked best for them.

Reflection - Students write in their journals typically after the first big test, reflecting on study skills and preparation. We also typically ask students to write before midterm exams, talking about anxiety and preparation, then they reflect after exams on their results.

2)  Portfolios

       This is an idea in progress. We have piloted some of this, and hope to implement a little more next year.

Portfolios are intended to keep track of a student's progress from year to year and from teacher to teacher. They are more for teacher records than for students. Each student's folder should be a record of progress in quarterly assessments. Samples of student work are useful, as well as a place to keep semester exams, record the students NLE scores, and comments from previous teachers can be logged.

Speaking Assessments - This assessment is currently in place. Students are assessed twice per quarter (ideally) at their ability to read a Latin text with correct pronunciation and phrasing. The teacher selects a passage which the student have read. In order for students to attempt phrasing and interpretation, they need to know what the passage means. We use the OJCL Latin Recitation passages for the midterm evaluation.

  Students are given tapes, but if they lose it they have to replace it. The assignment is due by the end of the due date. Therefore students who don't have tape recorders at home may use one at school anytime.

This assignment requires the direct teaching and reinforcement of pronunciation. Students also need to practice phrasing in order to avoid word-by-word reading.

Click here to see the rubric for assessing the speaking assessment. The text is copied on the back of the sheet and is marked for students to see the areas for improvement.

  The rubric is included in their grades for the quarter and the semester exam.  For a quarter, the rubric is translated as follows:  9 = 100%  8 = 95 %  7 = 90 %  6 = 85 %  5 = 80 %  4 = 75 %   3 = 70%  2 = 65 %  1 = 60%.  When this has been in place longer and students have become more accustomed to this assessment, the grade equivalents may become a little tougher.

Reading Assessments - We have piloted some aspects of this and hope to do better next year.

  The students are going to be given reading passages which are appropriate to their level at or near  the end of each quarter.  The questions are ten short answer or multiple choice questions. Reading questions do not focus on grammar (what case is this noun, what tense is this verb) or on discrete vocabulary (what is a gladius), although those questions may occur. Instead this is intended to assess students ability to derive meaning from a text. Questions may be "what happened after....; why did he...". 

The grades were not included in their quarter grade since this is a new assessment. We did make graphs of class performance and shared with them with the classes.

Writing Assessments - We have had some success with students doing original writing in Latin.

Latin II: After they study Hercules and write their own 13th Labor in English, they write a short summary in Latin.   Click here to see the whole Hercules lesson plan.

    Latin III: Comedy  As the students study Plautus in 1st quarter, they write in English their own comedy based on Ecce Romani. After they have studied the elements of comic language and style, they write a scene from their own comedy in Latin, trying as best they can to use puns, sounds and jokes.

      Oratory    As the students study Cicero in 3rd quarter, they write in English an oration based on the same story from Ecce Romani.  In the same way as they wrote the comedy, they write a selection of their oration in Latin.

Click here to see the rubric for assessing student writing.

   The idea is that the student work will be retained and can be used to document their progress.