The Primary Latin Report For Jact Council

July 2006

Publications
December saw the launch of the ’Minibooks’; these are10 short stories for extra reading material which accompany the Minimus books.  The illustrator of the book, Helen Forte, and I published these privately and had 500 sets printed and to date just over half have been sold.  Teachers report that they are proving popular with pupils, especially the Gifted and Talented pupils, who work through the Minimus material quickly. 

I am currently approving the Italian version of Minimus which is due out in the spring of 2007.

Training Days
In January we had a very successful Training Day at Haberdasher’s Girls’ School, Monmouth and the final Training Day of this academic year was held at James Allen’s Girls’ School in Dulwich.  For this last day we experimented with a new programme format.  Delegates attending Training Days now have very differing experiences of Minimus and so after the morning session we divided into a series of option groups so as to maximise the relevance of the day for each delegate.  This format proved popular and will be repeated for all the Training Days next year.

Future Training Days - Four have been planned for the next academic year.  Please note the dates and venues and email me for an application form: September 30th, 2006 in London; January 13th, 2007 in Bristol; April 21st, 2007 in Newcastle; June 9th, 2007 in London.  In addition to these main Training Days I will be speaking to Heads and Curriculum Planners in Hereford on Friday, September 22nd and to Classics students at Reading University on Wednesday, November 15th. 

JACT AGM
I was pleased to speak to a small group at this year’s JACT AGM held in Dulwich. Please note that next year’s JACT AGM will be held at my school, Clifton High School in Bristol on Saturday, May 12th and Minimus will certainly feature on the programme. 

Working with Children
It is always a great pleasure to meet the consumers and to see them having fun with Minimus.  Recently I have had a number of very special and enjoyable events.  In March I visited St Rose’s School in Stroud.  This school works with children who have serious physical disabilities and they had invited me to watch their end of term play ‘Nemo et Polyphemus’.  The children all performed their parts from wheelchairs and many who cannot speak had to make use of special recording equipment when it was their turn to perform.  The play was beautifully written by their teacher, Penny Fayter, and the children performed with enormous enthusiasm.  Prior to this visit, I had always imagined that anyone studying Latin must be able to read, write and speak but many of the children at St Rose’s cannot do at least two of these operations, yet they are following Minimus  with great interest and I had some most enjoyable conversations with the children.  One bright ten year old, for example, asked me “What is the exact evidence for the family in Minimus being a real family that actually lived at Vindolanda?”  My visit to St Rose’s was certainly a life- changing experience; it was incredibly moving to watch the children in their play and to receive flowers presented by a lad in a wheelchair.  I plan to maintain contact with this school. 

Also in March I was invited to deliver a Minimus Workshop to Gifted and Talented children from 7 schools in a cluster group in Plymouth.  I taught 3 one-hour sessions and the children covered the first two chapters of Minimus. Some bought their own copies and at least 2 of the 7 schools, possibly more, will be continuing with Minimus.

I also visited St Mary Redcliffe, a large comprehensive school in Bristol, where a large enthusiastic group of Year 7 children meet after school for an hour’s Minimus once a week.  I enjoyed chatting to the children and presenting them with their end of term certificates.

Finally, I was invited to teach a Minimus lesson to a home schooling group of children quite close to my home in Bristol.  It was quite a challenge as the group of 15 children ranged from age 6-14 ; nevertheless we had fun and I have been delighted to hear that one of the mums is continuing to take a Minimus  class for this  group. 
NB Although grants are only normally awarded to schools the Grant Committee will look favourably on a group of homeschoolers wishing to learn together.

Mythology Competition

I am very grateful to the Jowett Trustees who provided generous sponsorship for the first Mythology Competition.  Thanks too to Pam Macklin for organising the competition and to Roger Davies and Anne Radkin for judging it.  The theme for the first book was Medusa and for those using Minimus Secundus was Odysseus and the Sirens.  The judges were impressed by the inventiveness and hard work of the children and I was pleased to show the prize winning entries to the Jowett Trustees at a meeting in Oxford recently.  All of the prize winning art work will soon be displayed on our website www.minimus.com.  The Jowett Trustees have kindly agreed to continue their sponsorship and the details for next year’s competition will soon be available on the website and in my next newsletter.

Increasing Interest in the USA

I have recently returned from Philadelphia from the American Classical League Conference.  It is always great fun to attend this huge conference of Classics teachers where Nick and I are always given the warmest welcome. Minimus had a high profile at this year’s conference and I was able to do a joint presentation with Zee Ann Poerio called ‘Expanding the Empire’ in which we shared ideas for promoting Classics.  I also had the privilege of teaching a 90 minute Minimus lesson to some pupils of Gloria Endres who runs a Minimus group at Dunbar School, Philadelphia.  The children responded very positively and the room was packed.  Finally, another enthusiastic teacher, Chris Ann Matteo gave a talk on how to set up a Minimus club. 

Such are the increasing sales in the USA that the Committee has decided to invite two teachers to join us.  Thanks to generous sponsorship from Sir Jeremy Morse, Ruth Ann Besse from Maryland and Zee Ann Poerio from Pennsylvania will be attending Committee meetings in the next academic year.  The idea is that they will find out more about how the project runs in this country and may then be able to set up training sessions and special events in the USA.  In addition they will be able to tell us the sort of help that would be of most use to American teachers.  I am delighted by this new aspect of the Project’s work and I hope that many Minimus teachers will have the chance to meet them during their visits.

Latest Sales Figures

At the time of writing sales of the pupils’ book are approaching 75,000 copies and sales of Minimus Secundus have just passed 10,000. Over a quarter of all sales are now in the USA.

If you wish for any further information about publications, Training Days or any other aspect of the Project’s work please do not hesitate to contact me, on either tel/fax:  0117 953 1819 or email: bmbellmini@aol.com.  Our website address is www.minimus.com

Barbara Bell

Classics Teachers’ Discussion Forum

CSCP has established an online discussion forum for teachers. The forum is currently only open to teachers within UK schools.

Please visit http://www.cambridgescp.com/latin/clc/teachers_area/clc_ta_forum.php to register.

JACT Latin Committee Report - November 2004

Committee Structure

There have been several changes to the committee membership over the year and the committee is now as follows:

Rebecca Armstrong (University Liaison - Oxford)
Vicky Bingham
Simon Carr
Julie Dormer (Secretary)
Will Griffiths (Chair)
Paul Saunders
Tim Wheeler (Summer School)
Julie Wilkinson (ICT)

The change of Chair, from Simon Carr to Will Griffiths was requested in February and approved in May. The change of University Liaison officer occurred in September.

Public Examination of Latin

AQA's withdrawal of its examinations in Latin GCSE and A level represents one of the greatest threats to our subject at present.

It is clear from members' comments on our discussion forum that Latin GCSE is perceived by both teachers and, critically, students to be significantly harder than other GCSEs. Not only is the syllabus itself harder, but it is also harder for students who start Latin during KS3 to achieve grades equivalent to those they might expect to achieve in other subjects.

As an association we must act quickly to establish a working group on public examination of Classical subjects which:

• canvasses members on their attitudes to, and desires for, the structure and content of public examinations in Classical subjects
• creates recommendations for subject criteria for submission to QCA

It should be noted that in an interview in August, Charles Clarke commented "Classical languages should not be allowed to fade away". The Secretary of State for Education is said to have been angered by AQA's withdrawal of its Latin and Greek examinations. His statement is a useful one upon which the Latin committee will be able to act.

Teacher Support

1. discuss issues relevant to teaching and learning in Latin (and other Classical subjects)
2. share resources for the teaching and learning of Latin

To date the forum has about 50 members and attention will be drawn to the site in the forthcoming Journal of Classics Teaching.

INSET

The committee has created an outline for KS3 Latin INSET to be run from a Friday evening to a Saturday afternoon. However, the appearance of Keynote in the training market now reduces the need for the committee to think in terms of planning INSET for Latin. Keynote are offering 5 training days in Latin teaching this academic year, and Julie Wilkinson and Will Griffiths have been asked to help run some of these. The committee will keep this area under review.

Publicity

We feel we are in need of new publicity materials to make the case for Latin to today's students. Such materials may be print based, but we would also like to consider web-based or CD-based materials. Clearly substantial funding will have to be sought to put together a CD-Rom, but the need to 'sell' Latin is stronger than ever.

ICT

It is understood that there may be a re-examination of the purpose and structure of the JACT website, and in that situation the committee would be happy to address the purpose of the Latin subsection of the website. It is felt that it would be useful for this revision to be undertaken in concert with representatives of all subject committees and for a website team to be established to take the site forward and monitor the site on a day-to-day basis.

Will Griffiths
Chair, JACT Latin Committee

The Cambridge School Classics Project

Cambridge School Classics Project
Faculty of Classics
Sidgwick Site
Cambridge CB3 9DA

www.CambridgeSCP.com
Publications: 01223 361458
Online Support: 01223 330579
Fax: 01223 330584

Latin Rescources

on this page you will find the following:

• Inscriptions found in Pompeii
• Orpheus & Eurydice exercise 1
• Orpheus & Eurydice exercise 2
• NEAB GCSE Vocab List
• AQA AS Latin word list

Specifications

This page gives links to the Examination Boards that offer Latin.

Summer Schools

For details of JACT Latin Summer School and others please click here. Click here for details about the ARLT Refresher Course and Summer School for Teachers.