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.