Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Latin for Children A - Planning a typical week

The hardest part about starting a new program is figuring out exactly how best to plan it. Here is a look at my thought process for Latin. To start off with, I had absolutely no idea so I started searching the Classical Academic Press website and the archives of the Well Trained Mind boards. On the former site, I found the following two articles to be very helpful.

A Suggested Weekly Schedule

How to Teach Latin

My final schedule has ended up being a combination of the two articles. To the weekly schedule on day one, I have added making flashcards following the instructions in the second article. The flashcards will be color coded based on part of speech. On the front side we'll just list the first Latin form. The remaining forms and translations will be listed on the back. On day 3, when available, I've added an extra parsing or translation worksheet available free from the CAP website. On day 4, I decided to use the quiz in the Primer book for review and created my own test for day 5 based on the How to Teach Latin article. Basically, it means recreating the Primer quizzes but only listing the first Latin form in the vocabulary sections allowing Jessie to fill in the remaining forms and their translations.

The basic plan;

Day 1 - Go over the maxim, chant, and vocabulary in the primer. Discuss derivatives. Watch the DVD lesson. Make flashcards.

Day 2 - Review the maxim, chant, and vocabulary. Go over the grammar pages in the Primer and complete the worksheet page. Complete one page in the activity book.

Day 3 - Review maxim, chant, vocabulary, and grammar as needed. Complete a free parsing or translation exercise if available. Complete the remaining two activity book pages.

Day 4 - Review and complete quiz in primer.

Day 5 - Test

I'm going to start by allowing 30 minutes a day for the lessons, but I don't expect days 4 or 5 to actually require the full time. We do have the history reader to begin using when we reach chapter 18. It could be done on day 4 or on day 3 in place of the free exercises. We'll make a final decision at that point.

For now while we test out this schedule to see how well it works for us, I've only charted lesson plans through lesson 5 in a Word table. That way I can make any adjustments necessary without redoing my entire year. Here's my current lesson plan page.

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