Dear Friends,

This month’s edition comes to you with wishes for the holiday season. May you and your families and your students and their families find warmth in the spirit of the season. May the light of hope and the enduring human spirit pierce the darkness of the Solstice and the uncertainties of the pandemic.

May I take this occasion to honor my dear colleague, David Mathers, from my days as teacher and administrator at Loyola Academy? A Facebook post from the Academy just today celebrated his retirement after thirty-plus years this past June and his being honored by the Illinois Classical Conference with its Lifetime Achievement Award. Much deserved recognition for a master teacher, dedicated professional, loyal colleague, and dear friend! Through the years since I left the Academy, I have enjoyed working with David on playing the biennial Loyola Academy Classics Tour.

 

Last month we celebrated high school Latin scholar Michelle Wu's election as the first female mayor of Boston, Massachusetts, and shared her reflection in Classical Considerations. This month we feature this title with a special discount of 67%! These books would make great class prizes or mementos.

A decade or so ago, it was my privilege to give a presentation on the Latin for the New Millennium program at the ARLT (Association of Latin Teaching) summer conference held at the University of Sheffield. The occasion afforded me the opportunity to meet and befriend Bob Patrick and Latin teachers from Ireland, Mary Boissel and Louise Potter. I seized the day in May when I saw a special Aer Lingus package that enabled me to visit with Mary this past Thanksgiving. That visit yielded the "Classics Tidbits" from Birr in County Offaly. Though retired from teaching, Mary remains an ever-learning classicist and speaks fondly of the adult program she taught using LNM. It was a delight to share a few days in her beloved Birr.

All of us at B-C wish you all good things for the holiday season and for 2022!

 

PS: The ARLT website is a terrific resource.

 

PPS: ARLT used to be called the Association for the Reform of the Teaching of Latin. While "reform" has been dropped from their title, the "R" remains in their acronym.

It is almost the end of the period and the bell will ring in just 2 minutes! What are your students doing at this precise moment? They may be packing up their materials and migrating toward the door. Or perhaps they are intently listening to you as you try to squeeze in a couple more important points. It could be that they are working in groups or pairs to finish an activity. And the truth is that it is probably all of the above over the span of a week. At a PD workshop many years ago, the facilitator posed the following question to the group: "are we concluding a lesson or are we quitting?" This question really resonated with me at that particular moment and, in conversation, I discovered that it resonated for others too. We often plan more activities than we can complete in a single lesson. As the end of the instructional period grows near, we are compelled to cut out the last learning activities of the lesson and, often in a flurry, make the required announcements and reminders. Rather than this abrupt end to a lesson, how can we offer a conclusion? What techniques can we intentionally use to provide closure at the end of a lesson to ensure that our students have the greatest gains in learning?

If we want our lessons to have the greatest impact on student learning, then we must intentionally plan closure activities that maximize the value of the last minutes of a class. There are many ways that we can provide an impactful closure activity at the end of a lesson. Giving students the opportunity to reflect on or actively use the new knowledge and skills they have developed over the course of the class is particularly powerful.

A Latin learning journal can be really helpful to this end. The journal itself can be a composition book, a section in a notebook, or something digital. Really, whatever you're most comfortable with is totally fine. In your lesson plans, you routinely set aside the last five minutes of instructional time for students to contribute to their journals. Here are some of the many ways that students can reflect on the day's learning:

 

In addition to being a great way to facilitate end-of-class reflections, I also like to ask students to do more in-depth reflections here. For example, reflecting on the project, essay, or translation that best represents their learning so far and writing a paragraph about why they think so.

The last moments of a lesson offer an important opportunity for students to reflect on, process, and synthesize what they have learned as well as to consider where they still have gaps or questions. A learning journal is a simple way to make that happen.

Lynne West

 

Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers is pleased to be exhibiting in-person or virtually at these conferences of the new academic year.

AIA-SCS—Archaeological Institute of America/Society for
Classical Studies
2022 Joint Annual Meeting—A Hybrid
San Francisco Hilton Union Square, San Francisco, CA
January 5–8, 2022
B-C Representatives: Bridget Dean and Donald Sprague

CAMWS—Classical Association of the Middle West and South
118th Annual Meeting
at the Invitation of Wake Forest University
Marriott Winston-Salem, Winston-Salem, NC
March 23–26, 2022
B-C Representatives: Bridget Dean and Amelia Wallace

CANE—Classical Association of New England
116th Annual Meeting
University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA
April 8–9, 2022
B-C Representative: Donald Sprague

ICMS—International Congress on Medieval Studies
57th Congress will take place online
May 9–14, 2022
Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers will participate in the Virtual Exhibit Hall.

ACL—American Classical League
Diamond Jubilee Institute
College of Charleston, Charleston, SC
June 24–26, 2022
B-C Representatives: Bridget Dean and Donald Sprague

NJCL—National Junior Classical League
2022 NJCL Convention
University of Louisiana, Lafayette, Lafayette, LA
July 24–29, 2022
Cantantes licet usque (minus via laedit) eamus.
Let us go singing as far as we go—the road will be less tedious.
Vergil, Eclogues 9.64
B-C Representatives: Donald Sprague and Amelia Wallace

 

 

 

 

 

Classical Considerations: 
Useful Wisdom from Greece and Rome
 
Editor: Marie Carducci Bolchazy
 
136 pages, paperback, ISBN: 978-0-86516-6189 • $9.00 $3.00

 

 

 

This offer is valid for up to ten (10) copies, prepaid, no returns.