Monthly Archives: January 2013

Links for the Week of 20 January

This entry was posted in Links and tagged archaeology baths bibliographies funding Maps money professionaldevelopment roman_art scholarship spoken_latin summer timeline on by

The deadline to apply for the American Academy in Rome Classical Summer School has been extended to 31 January and there are still funding opportunities available for secondary teachers: http://aarome.org/apply/summer-programs-0
Only a few spaces remain in the free CAM workshop on Speaking, Writing, Reading, and Teaching Latin on 9 February: http://www.massclass.org/index.php/archives/309
Finds from the drains of Roman bath houses tell us what people wore and what they did there: http://www.livescience.com/26202-drain-lost-items-roman-baths.html (via @Nihil_Novi_Net)
A portrait of a Roman man buried in Roman Britain has been produced using Roman artistic conventions: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-21009520 (via @DHSBClassics)
A collection of bibliographies on Roman topics: http://cnx.org/content/col11220/latest/ (via @apaclassics and @iota_subscript)
An argument for teaching Latin: http://comingofageinthemiddle.blogspot.ca/2012/12/verbatim.html (via @quinnkl and @rogueclassicist)
Treasure that was buried to save it from invading Romans has been found: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/2-000-old-treasure-discovered-black-sea-fortress-151425299.html (via @quinnkl)
Comparison of the walls of Rome: http://nolli.uoregon.edu/wallsOfRome.html (via @SarahEBond)
Amazing interactive timeline of Greek and Roman history and literature: http://learninglatin.altervista.org/chrono/chronology.html?l=eng (via @rogueclassicist)

Thursday Resource: Wordle

This entry was posted in Links and tagged analysis graphic resource visual vocabulary words on by

Wordlejpg
Wordle is a website that can take any text you enter (like this selection from Caesar) and make a word cloud out of it. More common words are larger, and you can customize the shape and colors of the display.
Besides being pretty, it’s also interesting to run text through it and see what is the most common word in a passage. These can spark discussion of the frequency of usage of words in particular cases as well as bringing out themes from the work.
The website requires Java to run, so you may need to install the applet.

Latin stories

This entry was posted in Feature Posts and tagged grammar guest stories t_j_howell on by

Today’s post is a guest post from T. J. Howell.
———
Advanced Grammar Activities
It’s that time of year again. Time to introduce the ablative absolute to another generation of Latinists. Dreams (nightmares?) of “nouns having been verbed” and cheap alcohol jokes spin wildly in your head. You’ve reviewed ablative forms and the laundry list of participles. You’ve looked at sentences full of hoc facto, his verbis dictis, me auctore, vice versa, and all your other favorites. But how to get it to stick?
Here’s an idea that I’ve been playing around with recently in my classes. While it uses an active method, you can easily turn it into a composition or even a reading assignment if that’s what you prefer.
The idea is to make up a story. But you won’t be doing it, your students will. Each sentence should be simple and short – a noun, a verb, an object. Maybe a prepositional phrase if you’re feeling plucky! The vocab could be based on whatever you’re studying at the time or, if you have a class like mine, there’re sure to be lots of dinosaurs, pickles, butterflies, and awkward turtles. There should also be multiple actors and objects, since grammar laws frown on ablative absolutes sharing nouns with the rest of their sentence.
ludamus! Your first student says (or writes, or whatever, or maybe you start it so you have some control over vocabulary and theme) “olim miles per silvam ambulabat.” Ooh! Mysterious! What could happen? That’s the next student’s responsibility! Maybe that student suggests “subito miles sonitum in silva audivit.”
BUT – and here’s the ablative absolute part – they’ll have to start their sentence by refering to the one that was just said, i.e. “milite per silvam ambulante…” Naturally the second sentence in our example will now have to change a bit. Here you can talk about what “absolute” really means and why you can’t share nouns and all that. In the end the second sentence might be “milite per silvam ambulante, sonitus auditus est.” or “milite per silvam ambulante, aliqud in silva sonitum fecit.”
Then the story continues around the room. “sonitu facto, miles effugit. milite effugiente, arbor trans viam cecidit! via obstata, miles revertit. milite revertente, monstrum apparuit et dixit “me paenitet!” hoc dicto, miles constitit.”
And so on. You’ll have to do a little work to keep it on track, and it will help, as I said above, if you have a few people or items so the sentences can wind back and forth between them. I’ve found that it’s helpful to write the story on the white board or over a projected computer screen. That way, everyone can better keep track of the story and the weaker students have increasing numbers of grammatical models to lean on when making their own sentence.
——–
T. J. Howell has been teaching at Belchertown for 13 years, and is a graduate of the MAT program at UMASS, with extensive conventicula experience.