Every year I find new websites and tools that prove to be helpful in my classroom. This year, my school has gone 1:1, meaning every student has their own device (in our case, a Chromebook.) I am looking forward to the new ways that my students will be able to access tools and advocate for their own learning needs. Below are some sites that I hope will help facilitate this.
This is a vocabulary repository. You can select either Greek or Latin, then the textbook(s) or texts you are currently reading. You can drill down to specific chapters or passages, or keep the list open to all the words in a text. You can also exclude words from texts you’ve already read so that the vocabulary list is only new words. The list that is produced includes the entire dictionary entry for each word, full or simple definitions, and the ability to sort or filter the lists according to parts of speech. The list can be printed or exported to a spreadsheet or CSV file.
I feel the value of this website is that it can save some time for students who keep vocab lists (they could copy and paste entries they find valuable.) This would free up time for more in depth word study (e.g. having the students find derivatives for all the words on their own.) The spreadsheet and CSV exports also allow for import into popular flashcard websites like Quia or Quizlet.
Anna Andresian has created a self-paced drill website. Students can practice declining nouns, conjugating verbs, and many other exercises that involve identifying the attributes of words or adding inflections. There are also exercises involving whole sentences, use of cases, degrees of adjectives, and the like. When a student submits their exercise, the website offers instant feedback with the correct forms. Students and teachers can use the site without registering, or, once registered (it’s free), teachers can create classes and assign specific exercises for the students.
Though I don’t think grammar drills are the end-all be-all for a Latin class, this site definitely has its uses. It could be used for skill remediation and differentiation in a classroom. It could be used in a “flipped classroom” setting where students practice at home, then come to class to put their skills to use in composition or oral Latin. It is also great for when the textbook runs out of drills and you want an infinite number of random exercises.
HiRISE is a camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which takes high resolution images of the surface of Mars. The people behind the project have created blogs in many languages, including Latin, that display images from the camera with captions. Their purpose is to showcase Latin in the context of planetary science. They also have a twitter feed.
This site could be used in a variety of ways. The pictures could be jumping off points for conversational Latin, in which the students are expected to describe what they see (good practice for adjectives and nouns.) Or, a class could analyze the captions of each picture to determine what the terrain must look like. It could serve as an entree to reading some of the seminal planetary scientists like Galileo (and impressing your colleagues with your interdisciplinary STEM prowess.) I would love to have sites like these for other disciplines to show how universal Latin can be.
