After returning the students’ exercise books (see Lesson Eight), we began the lesson with our customary greeting.
2. I wrote the letters A, B and C on the board and said the following: A est littera prima. B est literra secunda. C est littera tertia. I asked them what they thought prima, secunda and tertia meant. The students then turned to the area in the book where they had previously written the numbers 1 to 10, and wrote primus, secondus and tertius next to unus, duo and tres.
3. The students opened their textbooks to lines 62-83. I explained that this was the same content as last lesson’s short lecture. We read the lines together off the board. As is our custom, I read the parts of the teachers, and the students read the parts of the adolescents. You can find the illustrated version of this chapter here.
4. I asked the students to reread lines 62-83 on their own, and to write down anything they didn’t understand in the back of their books. There were a few questions, mainly to do with the changing of the ends of primus etc.
5. I told the students that they were going to play “I Piscatum” - Go Fish. Most of the students had played this game before - although never in Latin. I told them that “I Piscatum” means “Go - in order to do some fishing.” Then I explained the rules for those who hadn't played before. I had a group of four students come out and I talked them through a couple of turns to show everyone how it worked, connecting the idea of Fishing with drawing a random card from the deck.
The full rules are included with the game, so I won’t expand on them here. But I made sure the students understood the meaning of ‘estne tibi….?’ (it wasn’t difficult as they already knew “estne” and “tibi”, and I wrote “Ordo te vocat - the order calls you - its your turn” on the board. I stressed the importance of speaking only Latin (Latine tantum) for the next fifteen minutes as they played. You can download and print a PDF version of the game here.
Observations: The Latine tantum really didn't work. The students were speaking A LOT of English, and I needed to remind them to read the Latin from the cards as they were handing them over. Having said that, a good deal of Latin was definitely begin spoken, so it hasn’t dented my faith in gaming as a way of encouraging Latin use. I think in future, when using a game, I will give the the students longer and allow a period of time to play in English AND Latin. Then we will switch to Latine tantum. I’ll see how that goes…
