William Sanders Scarborough.

Hurricanes go Greek!

Parthenon protestors strike a clever pose.

 

Porch of the Caryatids, the Erechtheum, Athens. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons 3.0.

Netflix melds Greek mythology and anime.

Celebrating Apollo with Poetry in the Palatine Museum

Nobel Prize winner Louise Glück’s poem on Dido.

Anthony Bennett notes that Pope Francis cites Vergil in his newest encyclical.

 

Pope Francis in Prato, Italy, November 2015. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons 4.0.

Feline Pedagogy

Mean Girls cite the pink Pharr!

 

Classical art and Campaign 2020

October 23, 2020

 

NB: The biennial meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South—Southern Section, originally scheduled for November 2020, will take place fall 2021.

 

Tuesday, October 20, 6–7:00 pm ET
Teaching Social Justice in the Latin Classroom
Presenter: Miriam Patrick, Parkview High School, Lilburn, GA

B-C is especially pleased to have Miriam reprise her very engaging and informative presentation. Participants enthused about last spring’s presentation. Every student has the right to see themselves in their classroom, content, and context. This webinar will focus on ways that Latin teachers can bring multiculturalism into the classroom through choosing appropriate visuals, choosing authentic materials, and reconsidering the context of the Latin language.

 

 

Presenter: Kurt Raaflaub (prof. emeritus), Brown University, Providence, RI

Renowned Caesar scholar, Kurt Raaflaub will address one of the key components in the recent reassessment of Caesar’s behavior and practices in the course of his conquest of the people of Gaul. What do we make of the genocide Caesar committed? How can we help our students deal with the dark side of Caesar and his Gallic Wars?

 

Kurt Raaflaub is the David Herlihy University Professor & Professor of Classics and History Emeritus, Brown University, where he taught from 1978 to 2009. Prior to Brown, Raaflaub taught at the Freie Universität in Berlin. He also served as co-director of the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC (1992–2000). Raaflaub’s main areas of interest and research include the social and political history of the Roman republic; the social, political, and intellectual history of archaic and classical Greece; and the comparative history of the ancient world. Among his many publications are Dignitatis contentio: Motivation and Political Strategy in Caesar's Civil War (Munich, 1974, in German); War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Washington DC, 1999, with Nathan Rosenstein); Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (Berkeley, 2007); War and Peace in the Ancient World (Malden Mass. & Oxford, 2007); Epic and History (ibid. 2010, with David Konstan); Geography and Ethnography: Perspectives of the World in Premodern Societies (ibid. 2010, with Richard Talbert); and The Roman Empire in Context: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (ibid. 2011, with Johann Arnason). He is the editor and translator of The Landmark Julius Caesar (New York, 2017) and is currently working on volume I of a new Cambridge History of War that focuses on the ancient world from a global perspective. His book The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece (Chicago, 2004) received the American Historical Association's James Henry Breasted Prize. Raaflaub earned his doctorate from the University of Basel in Switzerland.

 

Tuesday, November 17, 2020, 6–7:00 pm ET
Insights on the Launch of B-C Latin Novella Series
Presenter: Emma Vanderpool, Springfield Honors Academy,

Springfield, MA

This webinar introduces Bolchazy-Carducci’s Encounter Latin novella series, designed to engage and delight novice and intermediate Latin learners with comprehensible stories written entirely in Latin. Talented author Vanderpool will introduce the inaugural volume, Augury Is for the Birds: Mārcus dē Avibus Discit, demonstrating how she incorporated rubrics for the novellas. She will also share the inaugural Explore Latin: Avēs volume in the new “pre-reader” series that provides novice Latin learners with short, nonfiction texts on a range of subjects related to the ancient world.

Dear Colleagues,

 

We’ve entered my favorite season when the trees delight us with their variegated color and rainbow brilliance. Bask in nature’s beauty—may it bring you some moments of respite from the hard work that the pandemic has dealt you. Teachers are amazing!

 

A highlight of the fall is the opportunity to connect with friends and colleagues at annual meetings and conferences. Alas, in these covidian times, such connections have, by necessity, been virtual. Kudos to the Classical Association of the Atlantic States, whose triumfeminate Mary Brown (Executive Secretary), Maria Marsilio (Program Chair), and Jennifer Ranck (Webmaster) ensured a successful VAM, Virtual Annual Meeting! And, special thanks to the ubiquitous Emma Vanderpool, who assisted with tech for the meeting. Congratulations to Nancy Rabinowitz of Hamilton College and Maria Marsilio of St. Joseph’s University, whose careers and contributions to classics merited ovationes! It was edifying for me to be able to attend two panels, “Mirror Universes: What a Classics Unbound From Whiteness Could Have Been (and Still Could Be)” and “Pedagogical Innovations in Teaching Latin and Greek.” The presenters provided a set of stimulating papers. Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers was pleased to provide a virtual book display. Denise Flood, Latin teacher and world language curriculum leader at Bronxville High School in New York, won B-C’s special CAAS drawing for a $25 gift certificate.

 

In this issue, allow me to call your attention to this month’s teaching tip, “Insights on Lumina: Caesar and Vergil Selections by its Creator.” B-C recruited veteran AP Latin instructor Patrick Yaggy to develop an arsenal of questions for our new Lumina program geared to the AP Latin curriculum. Patrick’s essay explains the methodology and principles he employed while creating the interactive learning product. In the Teaching Tips and Resources section, we’re happy to feature some material useful for connecting to student interest in Halloween.

 

Start with the end. One of the mantras of lesson planning for teachers in secondary education is to think about the end and work backwards from there, to write an objectives-based assessment and structure lessons to achieve each of those objectives. This is helpful advice for any context, but it is absolutely critical for teachers of Advanced Placement classes in which a student’s mastery of the curriculum is measured by a single high-stakes exam. College credit is on the line in many circumstances, and for some students the AP exam result is even calculated into the final course grade. The AP curricula are unique in that it all comes down to one exam.

 

With so much on the line, the greatest preparation that an AP Latin teacher can give their students is assessments that mimic that exam. Familiarity breeds success. Like hundreds of other AP Latin teachers, I have spent countless hours writing such assessments: would the AP ask this sort of item? Would it ask about it in this specific way? What item distribution would my students see on a multiple choice set? On a short answer set? I shudder to think how many other teachers have spent those same countless hours struggling to answer those same questions and write all the same mock exam question sets. There have been various attempts to provide teachers with AP-style assessments, and many of them are excellent. None of them, however, mimics exactly what AP students will see on the AP Latin exam. The new Lumina interactive Caesar-Vergil platform does exactly this, and exhaustively so.

In Lumina, AP teachers will find over two hundred multiple choice and free response question-sets (about two thousand questions in all) covering every single line of the Caesar and Vergil syllabus. In writing them, I looked at every bit of information the College Board has published on the AP Latin program: the Course and Exam Description, the released exams from 2012, 2018, and 2020 (and the notes published with each), and finally the readers’ reports published annually in The Classical Outlook. I have also attended the annual workshops led by the Chief Reader at the American Classical League Institute. By way of those materials and information, I wrote every single question-set as if I were writing items for the actual AP exam.

 

While you will find some variability in question distribution, the twelve questions comprising the Vergil multiple choice section on the 2012, 2018, and 2020 released exams all contain the following: a scansion question, a stylistic device/figure of speech question, a question relating a feature of the text selection to another portion of the Aeneid, a cultural/historical/literary knowledge question (often more than one), and then a mix of grammar/syntax and comprehension items (usually totalling eight between them). The Vergil multiple choice question-sets in Lumina mimic this distribution, but are also sure to include the two most frequently missed question types (find the two words that -que joins and find the reference/antecedent for a pronoun) so that students have copious practice with them before taking the actual exam.

The Caesar multiple choice on the released exams, and so on Lumina, tend to skew toward reading comprehension and translation, with at least seven questions out of the twelve total assessing these skill sets. Each set lacks, of course, a scanning question, while the remaining portion of each set is comprised of a few grammatical/syntactical items, as well as one or two questions about the plot of the De Bello Gallico and/or a cultural/historical/literary knowledge question. On rare occasions, a stylistic device/figure of speech question appears. The same two frequently missed question types described above also appear in every Lumina Caesar question-set.

 

The verbiage that appears on the AP exam is reinforced on every Lumina question-set so that your students are familiar with not just what the AP exam assesses, but how those items are assessed. For instance, below are the scansion and literary device questions from the Lumina Aeneid 1.1–11 question-set, echoing verbiage and phrasing the students will see in May.

In a limited number of ways, the question-sets in Lumina do deviate slightly where the practice will benefit your students more greatly without sacrificing the integrity of the methodology. For instance, the external plot items, especially for the Caesar passages, are often AP’s evaluation tool for whether students have read the assigned English portions of the syllabus. In Lumina, most of these questions (but not all) are designed to reinforce nearby content. For instance, the question below, from the De Bello Gallico 1.1 question-set, assesses information that your students will have also read in the immediately adjacent Latin selection.

 

Your students will also benefit from the immediate auto-grading of the multiple choice questions on the Lumina platform as well as the feedback provided to them for review (whether the question was answered correctly or incorrectly). While the short answer questions cannot be auto-graded, each teacher is provided an answer key to aid in the process of evaluating student responses.

 

The short answer sections on Lumina continue the methodology of the multiple choice sections, and they mimic the regular features that appear on the AP exam: the Vergil section is comprised of five to six questions totaling eight points, while the Caesar section features five to six questions totaling seven points. Herein is the single deviation on Lumina from the AP exam format, and it is one of technological necessity. On the AP exam, students are asked to write out and mark the scansion on every Vergil short answer section. There is no way for this to be done on a computer (and certainly not with every user and a variety of devices, browsers, etc.), so that question is replaced in Lumina with another grammatical/syntactical or comprehension/translation item.

Here are two examples of question-types that appear on every AP short answer section, as well as in Lumina:

 

Teachers who access Lumina will be provided a number of prose and poetry sight passage multiple choice question-sets. Also, and crucially, Lumina subscriptions include a variety of mock exams, meeting any teacher’s needs, no matter how the AP curriculum is presented. In addition to two standard mock AP exams, an all-Vergil exam is provided for teachers to give as a midterm (for example), should students read all of the Vergil selections in the fall. There is an all-Caesar exam for the same reason. For those who follow the thematic syllabus (as is recommended in the AP Course and Description), another mock exam includes only the first half of all the thematic units so the teacher can give a midterm, should they desire.

In short, the corpus of material in Lumina is exhaustive, and deliberately so. While the primary goal is to provide copious examples of what will appear on the AP Exam, the secondary goal is to support teachers by offering them so much material that they would never need to write another multiple choice or short answer section again. Along with the huge number of released AP essay prompts and those included in A Vergil Workbook, 2nd ed. (Boyd and Bradley, 2012) and A Caesar Workbook (Nousek and Williams, 2012), access to Lumina means that a teacher has everything they needs to prepare students for the AP Exam every year.

 

Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers is thrilled to announce brand-new Lumina content that is now available: online exercises to accompany the Caesar and Vergil selections on the AP Latin syllabus! With its comprehensive, completely original content, Lumina: Caesar and Vergil Selections is a perfect complement to Bolchazy-Carducci's print and eBook resources for AP Latin. Better yet, Lumina: Caesar and Vergil Selections works on any internet-enabled device!

 

Features

To support teachers going remote this fall, content will be made available in stages. Multiple choice and free response questions for Vergil's Aeneid, Books 1 and 2, and Caesar's De Bello Gallico, Books 1, 4, and 6, are now available. The rest of the syllabus will be available October 26 or sooner. Practice exam content will follow.

 

To learn more, visit the Lumina: Caesar and Vergil Selections product page and watch the overview video.

 Lumina: Online Guided Practice to Accompany LNM

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.

 Artes Latinae: A Self-Teaching,

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 any program: bridget@bolchazy.com.

► Travel with students
Share with your students these readings about tourist misconduct. After reading the short articles, ask students to share their responses to the behavior. Teachers can save the articles as preparation materials for their next study tour of Italy and/or Greece.

 

by Gilbert Lawall

 

272 pages, paperback
ISBN 13: 978-0-86516-288-4 $35.00   $21.00