It’s the Roman feast of Saturnalia as I pen this holiday message. And the Winter Solstice is just days away. Plunged into that long day of darkness, it’s no wonder there’s so many religious celebrations at this time of year.

 

May the holiday season bring you cheer. May the holiday break bring you deserved rest and relaxation. May the New Year bring you much joy, good health, and the special satisfaction that comes from being an educator and touching the hearts and minds of your students.

 

All of us at Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers wish you and your families, your students and their families, a happy holiday season.

Cheers!

 

Bolchazy-Carducci’s Lumina digital platform now has courses available for their Latin for the New Millennium series. The interactive program developed for Level 1 and Level 2 textbooks is available through individual or classroom subscriptions. For each chapter of both textbooks, students can access numerous additional practice activities. A very comprehensive and thorough set of activities for reading comprehension, each of the language facts, and the vocabulary to learn helps students monitor their understanding. I really like that the activities offer a variety of types of questions and ways for students to practice. There are multiple choice, true-false, matching, fill in, crosswords, and drag and drop style activities.

 

Bolchazy-Carducci has done a great service to teachers in creating these digital practice activities for students. It is exceedingly time consuming for teachers to create these kinds of activities on their own. It is particularly challenging to set up all the possible correct answers. B-C’s developers of Lumina have done an excellent job with this. The activities function well and students can get immediate feedback on their efforts. Teachers have choices about how many attempts to allow students as well as how to score the student work. As a result, the activities are an excellent resource for formative feedback for both teachers and students. Additionally, it is very straightforward for teachers to share the activities with their students. If the teacher uses a learning management system (LMS) that is LTI link compatible, she can embed specific activities into the course page. Canvas, Blackboard, and Moodle are all LTI link compatible platforms. Sharing activities using this method enables grades to go directly into the LMS gradebook if desired. This is another great time saver for teachers. If the teacher does not use an LMS, Bolchazy-Carducci has built a Moodle site that students and teachers can use to access the activities. To learn more, visit Bolchazy-Carducci’s website. 

Classicists and thousands of their second language teacher colleagues marched on Washington for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language (ACTFL) annual convention held at the cavernous maze of the Washington Convention Center in the nation’s capital. Many attendees, like American Classical League (ACL) Executive Director Sherwin Little, had arrived early to visit Capitol Hill to advocate for language policies with legislators.

 

Editor Don Sprague staffed the Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers booth, located next to the ACL booth and National Latin Exam and National Junior Classical League colleagues. The three-booth block provided “one stop consulting and shopping” for Latin teachers. The only booth dedicated solely to classics books, B-C displayed the largest selection of Latin and Greek titles at the gathering.

 

Latin teacher presence at ACTFL continues to grow and many of the attendees stopped by the B-C booth. Popular items included the “I Am Reading Latin Stories” series like Octavus Octopus and B-C’s collection of buttons bearing famous Latin and Greek quotes. This year’s new titles—William Sanders Scarborough’s First Lessons in Greek, They Said It First: The Wisdom of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, and The Latin of Science—attracted attention as well.

 

Don enjoyed chatting with his teacher colleagues and helping world language teachers and department chairs pick out an appropriate gift to bring back to school for their Latin teacher colleagues who were unable to attend. He was also eager to discuss the pedagogy of Latin for the New Millennium and its fusion of the reading method and the more traditional grammar/translation approach.

 

A highlight of ACTFL each year is the American Classical League reception and the opportunity to share a nosh, a libation, and most importantly conversation with classicist colleagues. Some sixty Latin teachers assembled this year at the Marriott Marquis for this special event. Kudos to ACL for sponsoring this gathering! A highlight of ACL leader remarks was the announcement of the success of the Centennial Campaign. Consider a holiday donation to this most worthy cause.

 

If you’ve never attended an ACTFL convention, consider joining us next November in beautiful San Antonio. The program offers a healthy menu of Latin-oriented presentations and a myriad of presentations about second language learning acquisition, best practices, and smart pedagogy.

 

 

The Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers booth with its corner location offered representative examples of the company’s 400+ titles.

 

American Classical League Executive Director Sherwin Little listens carefully to ACL President Mary Pendergraft’s remarks at the

ACTFL reception. Pendergraft was especially pleased to

announce the launch of ACL’s new mentoring program.

 

The Philadelphia Classical Society held its Fall Professional Day on November 24. The registration table staffed by Meghan Quinn, their Secretary-Treasurer-in-training, welcomed 35 teachers to the gathering. Mary Brown, Executive Director of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States, generously shared copies of the Bolchazy-Carducci CAAS conference order form with her Philadelphia colleagues.

Theseus and the Minotaur on sixth-century black-figure pottery.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

 

The Minotaur and the legendary Cretan labyrinth

inspire this piece from The Onion.

As his senior year report card shows, Johnny Cash took Latin and perhaps was a member of the Latin Honors Society (the annotation by the Latin grade listing). Dean Nicastro, who taught editor Don Sprague Greek

at Boston College High School, shared this photo from the

Johnny Cash Museum in Nashville.

The Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church with its 1872 classical façade, located opposite the Marriott Marquis and kitty-corner to the Washington Convention Center, greeted ACTFL attendees.

The congregation was founded in 1850 and the

church was restored in 2008.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lumina online content offers new resources to support LNM, Levels 1 and 2. The interactive guided Language Fact sections provide immediate feedback to students as they preview or review each chapter of Latin for the New Millennium Level 1 or Level 2. Mouse-over vocabulary lists allow a new format for vocabulary mastery. Infinitely replayable crossword puzzles engage students in derivative work. Automatically graded quizzes free up student-teacher interaction time for translation, oral/aural work, discussion, and other learning activities. For a brief overview of the program, check out this video.

 

 

Lumina offers a revamped Artes Latinae. This fully interactive online program teaches all of Latin grammar in two courses. Purchase the program at a special discounted price of 25% off! For a brief overview of the program, check out this video.

Based on the program developed by Dr. Waldo E. Sweet of the University of Michigan for Encyclopedia Britannica, Lumina: Artes Latinae is an easy-to-follow course that includes all the tools a student needs to achieve a firm command of Latin. The course was carefully crafted and refined to suit the needs and abilities of a broad spectrum of students. Lumina: Artes Latinae meets existing foreign language requirements for high school graduation.

Contact us for an individual consultation on either program: bridget@bolchazy.com.

Latin Music Through the Ages
Contributor: Cynthia Kaldis
128 pages, ISBN: 978-0-86516-242-6 $25.00 $15.00

 

Latin Music Through the Ages Lafayette Chamber Singers - CD
Conducted by: Clayton Lein
CD with 12 Music Selections, ISBN: 978-0-86516-706-3 $25.00 $15.00