I created this log to track student's progress in the final weeks of a term if they were in danger of failing. I used this to track:

• attendance
• participation in classwork
• notes for the day (behaviour, support given, etc)
• grade prior to final
• final exam grade
• final notes

Using a log like this helped me create a record of student progress and work and to provide an explanation to parents and students as needed.

This is a story I created to help my ELLs review the follow content items:

1. family members
2. days of the week
3. wants and requirements
4. routines
5. question words

We also practised these activities:

• reading (silently or out loud)
• discussion/circling
• reading comprehension
• listening comprehension
• charting​

This resource includes:

1. a simple English story about Marla and her weekly routine
2. a presentation in PDF format of this story with visuals​
3. a PPT version of the story with visuals
4. comprehension questions that can be printed for students to write on or as a discussion after reading

I used this with my ELL learners who were newcomers to the country. Since it is written in basic English, I really wanted to go slowly with this and ensure comprehension. Prior to writing this I had asked students about things they wanted to do and things they had to do. This influenced the things in the story as well. 

I don't want to write a minute by minute lesson plan for this, but I do want to share how I did it by sharing what I considered in between each slide. Take what you want from this and leave the rest :) 
Reading Ideas

• I mostly read this out loud since this was a class of newcomers.
• If a student wanted to read out loud, I let them.
• Once the class became comfortable, we read it together as one voice.
• I never corrected pronunciation unless it hindered comprehension OR the student asked. 

Discussion/Circling While Reading

• Since this was a newcomer class, I started with a fairly traditional Comprehensible Input formula for questions:
  • yes/no question (yes answer)
  • yes/no question (no answer - may be multiple questions)
  • repeat yes/no question with yes answer
  • either or question (may be multiple questions)
  • open ended question (may be multiple questions)
• This is also a great opportunity for personalised questions. Since I had already polled the class I knew who I could comfortably ask about their weekly routine. Then I could expand and include others. 
  • ​e.g. while Maria LOVES to dance and dances daily, Martin hates dancing. But... he watches it on TikTok. 

Embedded Chart Practice

• I had students draw a weekly chart on paper. I showed them the blank chart from the story and we wrote in the days of the week. Since we are in the US, we started with Sunday, but we discussed how they are more familiar with starting on Monday. 
• For each activity, we marked our own charts first and then I revealed the slide with the answers. 
• I also circled which days each activity was done each time we referenced the chart. 

​Final Comprehension Check/Other Activities

• I used this as part of a larger lesson, so I did not include any writing when I did this.
• The TPT file includes questions that can be used as discussion or printed to give to students
  
• Other ideas to consider:
  
  • ​Treat this as a dictation/pictation. Read the sentences twice each and after students write them down, they draw pictures to go with them.
  • Give students the sentences and pictures separately. Have them recreate the story and match pictures to sentences.
    
  • ​Give students the sentences only from this and have them create a comic strip.
    

Use this form to easily assess students' abilities in Latin class. This resource is great for assessing skills like:

• listening
• spelling
• translation
• vocabulary

A dictatio is an excellent activity for:

• introducing vocabulary, grammar, culture, and stories
• a low key day (aka Mondays)
• an introduction to a new unit
• a review before an assessment

Want more information? Check out these links:

1. Dictatio (by Robert Patrick)
2. Auto Dictatio (Adapted from Ben Slavic by Robert Patrick)
3. Dictatio Currendo (by Robert Patrick)
4. Pliny and Dictations (by Miriam Patrick)

I originally started working with this poem as part of a Latin III story for October in 2017. There were some new things I wanted to try out and I love talking about different kinds of witches and surprising cultural facts. This poem features garlic and it's "nocens" attributes. My IIIs enjoyed the poem and our discussion that followed and so I've kept in my back pocket for when another time would arise and it could be useful. Enter 2021 :). In wanting to do some scary stories, my Latin I colleagues and I each chose a story for this most wonderful time of the year and I pulled this poem out! What follows in this post is a section on how I taught it for Latin III and resources and how I'm teaching it with Latin I and resources. Enjoy! Unless otherwise listed, work is my own. 

If you haven't read the original of this poem, you can do so here with my translation, plus a traditional translation below it (retrieved from the Perseus Project). When considering this for my Latin IIIs, I considered a few different things:

• length
• vocabulary familiarity
• Grammar familiarity

My Latin  IIIs had started requesting explicit grammar, so I always looked at my texts to see if I could incorporate more of what they knew so they could see it and practise with it. 

Ultimately I think you can see the most adaptation in the length and vocabulary. We didn't have long with this sidebar from our unit, so over the course of three days, we did a few activities with this work:

I used "vs." here... not because it's a battle, but because most high school students won't see Horace at all. I readily admit that when I originally looked at this poem for Latin III years ago, I was scared. When I studied Horace in grad school I felt like... every time I started to get him as an author, he'd just laugh at me. The second time around, I felt better. I had already done the back work: I'd translated the poem, I'd compared my work against a published work, I had already adapted it once. 

This lesson was part of three stories that my colleagues and I chose for the October season. We decided to include a codeswitched passage for each story and do that on Day 1. We also paired this with a Blooket game made up of words students said they needed more practice with. 

These lessons are from the year 2020. In this year, after doing many years of straight history, I wanted to look at culture and perspective via folktales. I grew up surrounded by Southern folktales, religious mythologies, and fables, and as I got older I learned the folktales of my ethnic traditions in Ireland, Italy, and Latvia. Storytelling is an important element to every culture and should be celebrated :)

Each story below was either taken from a free public source or I bought the book that goes with it. If you use these lessons, please purchase the appropriate book where appropriate to support these rich and wonderful stories. In respect for these authors and illustrators, any artwork from the book itself has been removed from my lessons. Please note that links to research are provided in the Teacher Notes.

It was also for these lessons that I developed some of my original characters, particularly Leaula. If you use this artwork, please cite me appropriately. 

​Below you will find a brief intro to each story and then the lesson plans. If you should find any issues or have any questions, there is a place for you to contact me at the bottom of this page. 

This lesson plan is from Black History Month in 2019. For this lesson I wanted to focus on innovators in their field. These lessons also focus on African American History specifically. In this post, you'll find a brief description of each person and, below, the lesson plan embedded with links. If any of the links don't work, you'll find a form at the bottom to fill out. 

Mary Fields, also called Stagecoach Mary, was born in 1832. She was an enslaved person in Tennessee until 1865. After 1865, Mary worked in the home of Judge Edmund Dunne and, when his wife passed, took the judge's children to live with their aunt. When their aunt fell ill, Mary took care of the children, nursed the aunt, and afterwards tended their garden and livestock. Eventually she became a forewoman. Unfortunately, after an incident with a subordinate, Mary was ordered out of the area. The children's aunt, however, helped her open her own restaurant and Mary would serve anyone who needed food, whether or not they could pay. 

At 60, Mary became the first African American woman (2nd woman and 1st African American) to be hired by the USPS. She was hired because she was able to hitch a set of six horses the fastest of all the candidates. Mary drove her route with her horses and a mule she named Moses. She never missed a day of work, earning the name "Stagecoach" and during snowy weather, Mary would often walk the mail herself. Mary was known to be fiercely independent and always carried a gun with her to protect herself, her animals, and the mail.

Mary was well respected and the town she lived in celebrated her birthday every year. She died in 1914. About her Gary Cooper wrote, "Born a slave somewhere in Tennessee, Mary lived to become one of the freest souls ever to draw a breath, or a .38".

Dr. Guion S Bluford is an American aerospace engineer (retired) who served in the US Air Force as an officer and fighter pilot. He was the first African American person in space and participated in four shuttle flightes between 1983 and 1992. Bluford graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1964, received a Master's degree from the US Air Force Institute of Technology in 1974, and got his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from AFIT as well. He got his wings in 1966. In the Vietnam War he flew 144 combat missions, 65 of which were in North Vietnam. He has over 5,200 hours of jet flight time and has an FAA commercial pilot's license. 

In 1979, Bluford became a NASA astronaut. His first mission was on the Challenger in 1983 and was the first mission to have a night launch and a night landing. During the mission they destroyed the Indian National Satellite and completed 98 orbits of Earth in 145 hours. In 1985, Bluford was part of a mission to carry the largest crew to fly in space under German direction. In 1992, Bluford completed a mission that performed a number of military-man-in-space experiments and has logged over 688 hours in space. 

​Bluford was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1997 and into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2010. 

CW: mention of an eating disorder

Misty Copeland was born in 1982 and is a ballet dancer for the American Ballet Theatre. She is originally from Missouri, but was raised in California. She is the first African American woman to be a principal dancer for the ABT (they have a75 year history). Throughout her childhood Copeland struggled with a variety of issues including a custody battle between her mother and her dance teacher, and ED, body dysmorphia, and injury.

Copeland began studying ballet at 13, which is considered a very late start in the dance world. In 1997 she won the Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Award and joined the ABT in 2000. She became a soloist in 2007. 

Additionally Copeland is a public speaker, spokesperson, and stage performer. She's written two books and narrated a documentary about her career. In 2015, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She's also performed on Broadway, toured as a featured dancer, and appeared on TV. 

Dr. Mark Dean, born in 1957, was the first African American to become an IBM fellow. He grew up in Tennessee and received degrees from the University of Tennessee, Florida Atlantic University, and a Ph. D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University. In 1997, Dean was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. 

At present, Dean is the interim dean of Tickle College of Engineering (as of 2019) and is a professor at the University of Tennessee. He works for IBM Middle East and Africa and has served as a VP overseeing research in San Jose, California. Dean holds 3 of the original 9 patents from IBM and helped develop the interior architecture that allows multiple devices to be connected to computers. Overall he holds over 20 patents.