The students each took out the map that they had drawn, and the game sheet for Provincia, which I reminded them we would be playing this lesson. I asked them to look at the word parvus in the left hand column of the scoring table, and pointed out that the word parvus changes - parva silva, parvus fluvius, parvum oppidum, and asked why they thought that it might do this.
To my surprise, the first response was that perhaps the words meant different things - like small, smaller and smallest. I wasn’t expecting this, but rather than get caught up on comparatives and superlatives I simply said- twice! I think - that parva, pavus and parvum all mean EXACTLY the same thing. Why then might they be written differently? Soon afterwards, someone saw the similarity between the ends of parva and parvus and the ends of insula, fluvius etc. This - I said - was the observation I was looking for. I did not mention grammatical gender - I figure that can wait - but I did say that words like parvus and magnus DO change their endings to match the words they are describing. We saw that the same thing occurred with magnus.
2. I now asked the students to label the insulae, fluvii and oppida on the maps that they had drawn, eg: silva parva, oppidum magnum. They used the Provincia game sheet to ensure that they were labelling each correctly. I moved around the room and watched them writing. I am nowhere near convinced that they all understand WHY parvus changes to match silva, oppidum etc. But they all labeled their features correctly - so they do know - when describing these four words at least - that there are different endings for the adjectives describing them. I figure we can build from here.
3. It was now time to play Provincia (which you can download here), and this took up the bulk of the lesson (25-30 mins). That included a quick revision of the rules, which can be broadcast onto a screen from here. As with last time, I was peppering in Latin as much as I could - exempla grati - if you draw a ‘silva magna’ you will get ‘septem puncta.’
I gave each student a handout with the card types numbered (i got these back at the end of the lesson) and explained that I would be calling out a landscape feature and a number - for example, silva : septem. I read each card I pulled in the following fashion : silva : septem, silva : seven, silva : septem. So, I was always translating the number, but never the landscape words that we have been drilling.
Yes, there was some confusion with the rules, but it went fairly smoothly. I made it clear that it was fine if a few mistakes were made, but the students were trying very hard not to make any. We fitted the game in, but I felt rushed at times, and was anxious about the timing. I left about 5 minutes at the end for scoring - which was enough, but only just. We all added up our scores and declared a winner. I told them that we would return to learning Latin next lesson.