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I was on a journey this last week to find new activities I wanted to try and stumbled on a bunch from Martina Bex that I hadn’t seen before. I will be writing about each, but today’s focus is on Musical Vocabulary. Martina calls it Musical Flashcards and you can read her write up here. Prep WorkFor this game you will need enough sheets of paper or poster (use half sheets or the smaller size) to cover all the students in your class. I made enough to cover each chair in my room. On each paper, write one of your vocabulary words. You can laminate words you’ll use often/every year! You’ll also need a playlist of songs to play during the game. I have a playlist I make each year of songs I know kids like and song requests from students after I vet them. Another optional thing is to use Classroom Screen to make the following:
Game PlayPass out a paper for each student. I also put papers on any empty chairs. When students hear the music play, they need to stand up, leave the paper in the chair, and walk around the room. They should be looking at each paper and remembering which vocabulary they know. When the music stops, they need to quickly sit down with a paper. Call on 5 different students (If you are using a randomiser, this is the time to use it!). If they can tell you the word in the target language AND what it means in their language (I have Spanish speakers in my class, so I played the game with them in Spanish and in English with my English speakers), then they are done and ready for the next round. If they cannot tell you what the word means, they have a little work to do. Here is what I required of students: If you don’t know what the word means, you need to take these steps before you can play again:
Final ThoughtsI did this today with both my Latin and ESOL classes. It was a MAJOR hit. The kids really enjoyed the movement and speed at which they needed to sit down. When they didn’t know the word, they wanted back in, so they quickly followed the steps and rejoined the game.
In my ESOL class we had some extra time, and so we went over all the words at the end of the period. Each student had to bring me their word when they heard it called out and we went over what it meant as a class. We will DEFINITELY play this again.
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I mentioned in an earlier blog that Parker J. Palmer has noted that when we teach, we are always teaching three things, whether we realize it or not. We teach a subject. We teach other human beings. And, maybe the most surprising of the three: we teach our own lives. I want to talk about the first two in this blog. Number three deserves a post all of its own.
No one argues with the first one. None of us went through degree programs, accrued student loan debt, went through student teaching, probationary periods and countless observations without being clear that we teach a subject. For many reading this, that “subject” is actually a language--Latin, for many of us, or other languages. Our essential questions are on the board. Our syllabus is posted in all the right places on the school system platform, and it is filled with the district and state mandated learning objectives. While this is all necessary and an absolute requirement for teaching and learning, it is also the absolute minimum of what it means to teach--that is--teaching a subject, if the other two things are not well in place. If our teaching is suffering, it would be a bet worthy of significant denarii (Roman money) that it is not because we are not clear about the subject we teach. You might think that it goes without saying that we teach human beings. Therein lies the problem. It often goes without much of a discussion at all. We do endure many sessions of PD (professional development) on making our rooms welcoming, supporting students social, emotional and learning needs. We receive IEP’s (Individual Educational Plans) and 504 warnings and guidelines (for students with health issues that must be attended to), but aside from quiet conversations with another colleague, we almost never talk about that third period class that is beyond the pail as a group; or the student at the end of the day who always looks so depressed; or why the student in first period always comes in with class half over acting as if we should have been waiting on them to arrive before we started. And those are mild examples of the human beings we teach who can be really challenging. We teach them. Whether we like them or not. Refusing to try to find a way with EACH of the human beings who enter the room is a breach of what it means to be a teacher. This is where some of us might get a little uneasy. “I didn’t sign up for XYZ #student #situation #attitude #behavior. Effective teachers, though, do. Most of us wake up to that somewhere along the way, some earlier in their careers and some later. When some wake up to this reality, they leave teaching, and that can be honorable. They really did not sign up for this kind of work with human beings, and it’s best if they move on to their life’s journey and find what they are signing up for. Some wake up to this and realize in a way that can be rather jolting, that teaching human beings is really the thing that matters, and their subject (language) is just a vehicle. I have a PhD in Latin. Earning that degree was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done. It’s not nearly as important as how I work with other human beings. I received monetary awards and public notice for the PhD. What I receive from learning how to work well with other human beings, especially all those I did not sign up for, is the sense at the end of the day, or the end of a week, or the end of a school year or the end of a career, and hopefully, one day, at the end of this life, that there are people out there doing well in some part because we did meaningful work together. That matters, far more, than Latin, but without Latin, I’d have no way into this work. Many of you may already know me, or you know part of me, so this is less of an introduction and more of an introduction: the remix (insert your favourite DJ’s tag here). My name is Miriam Patrick and I am one of the founders of Scroll and Grove. I was also one of the founders of Pomegranate Beginnings (PBP). A lot has gone on since PBP was founded back in 2015. If you are interested in my academic profile, you can see that here! In this post, however, I want to consider the changes I’ve gone through as a teacher, a Classicist, and as a writer. When PBP was founded, and we published the first Latin novella, I had no idea what would come after. There were great things, but also not so great things; people loved our work and people hated our work. This is true for anyone who ever puts their work into the public sphere. I think, however, that the good far outweighed the bad. While I greatly appreciate all the feedback and engagement from my Classicist community, what will always remain true for me is that I do what I do because I like helping students succeed. They are the reason I get up every morning to go into my classroom and teach. Back in 2015, I was nearly finishing a master’s degree in Classics with a thesis focusing on proto-racism in the ancient world, particularly working with how the Romans treated the tribes of what we call Ethiopia and the tribes of what we call Ireland. This is still a passion of mine and my research in this field is never ending. But, my passions have expanded and evolved. While I still use Comprehensible Input (CI) in my classroom, I no longer only teach Latin. I also teach English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) and I now have a second master’s degree in Special Education. Latin was and is my first academic passion. A lot of what you will see from me in Scroll and Grove will be on the topics in Latin I love, but you will also see new things from me. I have always been social justice minded, but I am now in a different place than I was nearly 10 years ago. I think it is a better place and I am so excited to share it with you! Here is just a taste of what is to come in future blog posts from me:
Written by Miriam Patrick
In a sense, every post or podcast or publication or conversation that we hold here or through Scroll and Grove is asking this question. It could be about what we are doing here in this blog. It could be about what we as teachers and learners are doing here in our classrooms with our students in all their wonderful variety. It could be what we are doing here in our personal lives. Parker J. Palmer says that when we teach, we always teach three things, whether we know it or not. We teach a subject. We teach human beings. And, we teach our lives. So, of those arenas, we will constantly be asking: what are we doing here. Scroll and Grove as a joint effort between daughter and father. He retired a few months ago after 32 years of teaching, mostly Latin, mostly high school but a few other things and in different places and levels along the way. She is in the middle of her career as a teacher, teaching Latin and English as a Second Language, sponsoring or co-sponsoring several student organizations. She is in the thick of teaching, and he has the benefit of the long gaze over a career. We will be offering these blogs twice every month, and sometimes a guest blogger will join us. We will be here reflecting on three things: 1) Latin as language and as literature, looking at meaningful connections between the ancient and modern world.; 2) the art and science of human beings teaching human beings; and 3) the search for truth and meaning through practical and transformative experiences. While we might at times try to tease one of these out from the others, the reality is that they all are always weaving in and through each other. We hope that you will join us in the questions and the search for meaning as we do this work and answer this call to teach. Written by Bob Patrick
1 March 2023!
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