Latin Teacher Named WGN Teacher of the Month October 2009

Erin Flynn of Lincoln Way Centeral High School is the WGN Television Teacher of the Month for October 2009!

 

Cambridge School Classics Project Update

The Cambridge School Classics Project Stage Activities continue to be unavailable, but it sounds as if they will be back in mid-November, albeit with a small fee for schools and home users who wish to use the online resources. Schools will be charged a modest per annum fee ($30 per school) plus a small user fee ($2) for each student, enabling students and staff to access the Cambridge activities from home and school. Homeschooling families will pay a $10 charge per user per year. For full details see the Stage Activities site.

Martha Stewart as Medusa!

Today's Martha Stewart show features the domestic goddess as Medusa, surrounded by living "marble" statues, costumed as mythological gods and goddesses! Lots of Classical references, colonnades and statuary! Actress Blake Lively appears as Egyptian empress Cleopatra.

Also check out the very cool "Hippocrates Bust Candle" craft.

Thanks to Linda F for the alert!

The Canadian Opposition Party Leader Does Not Speak Latin

Just in case you were wondering...

From The Canadian Press via Yahoo:

"Mea Culpa: Latin Press Release from Liberals No Magnum Opus"

Second Annual Terence Awards Announcement

Details of the Second Annual Terence Award competition have been released. The Terence Award bestows cash awards and book vouchers to those junior high, high school, and university students whose videos are deemed to most convey Classics in a way that is informative, entertaining, or both. Last year the contest was open only to those living in the U.S., but this year a category of "Foreign Film" has been added for non-US citizens living outside of the US and its Territories.

Prizes are awarded in the following categories:

• Best Picture, Junior Prize (junior high, high school, or homeschool student(s) ages 11–18 at the time the film was created)
• Best Picture, Senior Prize (college or university students aged 18+ at the time the film was created)
• Best Foreign Film Prize (all levels, students who are non-US citizens living outside of the United States and its Territories at the time the film was created)

The Best Picture and Best Foreign Film prizes recognize excellence in student filmmaking which include exceptional creativity, superb writing, acting, and production of a movie with Classical themes including, but not limited to history, mythology, and/or culture. Movies may be set in any time period (past, present, future, or a combination thereof) and can be live-action, animated (including machinima), or a mix of live action and animation. The use of Latin and/or Greek is encouraged, but not required. Subtitles may be used.

• Best Use of Latin in a Film Prize (all levels, Classical, Medieval, Vulgate, etc.)
• Best Use of Greek in a Film Prize (all levels, Homeric, Classical, or Koine)

The Best Use of Latin/Greek prizes celebrate excellence and creativity in the integration of Latin and/or Greek into a student-created film. To be eligible for these prizes, the films must contain Latin/Greek subtitles and/or Latin/Greek spoken dialogue or narration.

A single film can win both a Best Picture prize and a Best Use of Latin/Greek prize. The Best Foreign Film prize-winner is also eligible to win Best Picture (Junior) or Best Picture (Senior).

Winners will also have their videos featured on the eClassics homepage for one month, and will be designated as a Terence Award-winner for all time.

The grant to fund cash prizes for the Best Picture winners (Junior and Senior) and Best Foreign Film is made through Excellence Through Classics (ETC, a standing committee of the American Classical League for the promotion and support of Elementary, Middle School and Introductory Classics Programs). Winners of Best Use of Latin/Greek will receive vouchers for free books from Bolchazy-Carducci.

Winners will be announced at the American Classical League Summer Institute on June 27, 2010, and will be simultaneously posted on eClassics and on various Classics discussion lists.

To obtain full details on the contest rules and how how to enter please contact Andrew Reinhard, Director of eLearning at Bolchazy-Carducci, at areinhard@bolchazy.com.

The deadline for submissions is May 30, 2010. Videos may be entered either electronically or by postal mail. Late submissions will not be considered. Submissions cannot be returned.

There is no entry submission fee.

Legible Latin

Legible Latin is a Latin dictionary and text reader software package written by Thomas McCarthy and available from Perlingua Language Tools. With it, you can analyze text for reading. Seven well-known texts come with Legible Latin (Caesar, Cicero, Sallust, Vergil, Livy, the Gospels and the Gesta Romanorum) or you can paste in your own text or retrieve it from an online source. The program also includes a "macronizer" for adding macrons to Latin text. The dictionary utilized by Legible Latin is based upon Whitaker's Words, but you can also look up words through the program's interface with dictionaries on the internet (via the Perseus Project or a dictionary of your own choosing). Legible Latin is free and comes in all three flavors, Windows/Mac/Linux. Legible Latin is produced by the same company that brought you SightWords.

C.I.C.E.R.O.

C.I.C.E.R.O. is an acronym that used to stand for for Certamen in Concordiam Europam Regionum Omnium ("A Competition to Promote Harmony in All Areas of Europe") but due to the expansion beyond Europe into Tunisia and Australia (see the breaking news regarding this development on the ARLT Weblog), C.I.C.E.R.O has now gone international and the acronym now stands for Certamen in Concordiam Europam Regionumque Orbis ("A Competition to Promote Harmony in All Areas of Europe and the World".) The C.I.C.E.R.O. competition is a challenging translation competition for "Sixth Form Classicists." (To translate this for Americans, students in the European "Sixth Form" would be high school juniors and seniors stateside.)

Visit the official C.I.C.E.R.O. site to find out more about this competition, which has the patronage of of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe. Do be aware that the site hasn't been updated to reflect the international status of the competition yet. For the latest breaking news, you will want to visit the CiceroCertamen Channel on Youtube.

Learning Latin Lasts a Long Time

A retiree reminisces about what he learned in Latin class over sixty years ago in "Storytelling: Learning from Year of Latin Lasted a Lifetime" (The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 28, 2009)

One More Deadline! Coming Soon!

Applications for the The Classical Association of the Middle West and South's 2009 Translation Contest are due this Friday, October 30, 2009.

(The unofficial word is that they will likely forgive you if you get your registration in a day or two late...)

View a list of other Classical contests!

Make that Deadline This Year!

APPROACHING DEADLINES

There's Still Time!

Association foR Latin Teaching

Latin Reading Contest
(United Kingdom-only, I assume. I didn't notice a deadline.)
http://arltblog.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/arlt-reading-competition-2010/

Edited to Add another Contest... Applications for the The Classical Association of the Middle West and South's 2009 Translation Contest are due this Friday, October 30, 2009. (The unofficial word is that they will likely forgive you if you get your registration in a day or two late...)

Golden Sponge Stick Mystery Story Writing Contest
http://flavias.blogspot.com/2009/08/golden-sponge-stick-comp-09.html
Open internationally this year, still open for entries, but the December 10, 2010 entry deadline is approaching.

Phaedrus Latin Contest
http://www.phaedruslatincontest.org/index.php
Entries due March 1, 2010, but you need to sign your students up before the end of 2009 calendar year.

National Mythology Exam
http://www.etclassics.org/nme.html
Deadline: January 15, 2010

Classical Literacy Exam
No Latin required, but will include some memorized phrases and mottoes.
http://abqlatin.com/classical-literacy-exam
Deadline: January 15, 2010

National Latin Exam

http://www.nle.org
Deadline: January 16, 2010

National Greek Exam

http://nge.aclclassics.org

Deadline: January 19, 2010

Medusa Myth Exam
http://www.medusaexam.cjb.net/
Deadline: February 13, 2010

Exploratory Latin Exam
http://www.etclassics.org/ele.html
Exams may be administered at any point between October 1, 2009 and April 1, 2010. Teachers must return completed exams within one week after each administration. Results from all exams, regardless of administration date, will be sent in May 2010.

LINKS TO LAST YEAR'S CONTESTS

Already awarded in 2009

Awaiting New Announcements for 2010

ACL Poster Contest
http://www.aclclassics.org/Institute/2009/Poster.aspx

Bernice Fox Writing Contest
http://department.monm.edu/classics/Department/FoxContest

Updated to Add the C.I.C.E.R.O. competition

http://www.ciceroeuropa.eu/

http://www.youtube.com/user/cicerocertamen

and the Terence Awards sponsored by Bolchazy-Carducci

http://eclassics.ning.com/profiles/blogs/first-annual-terence-awards

The Death of Language

Interesting feature story on the BBC4 Radio website entitled "The Death of Language?" I was fascinated to read about the rebirth of the Hebrew language in this article.

Peregrinatio and Tarheel Reader

Visit Peregrinatio, Anna Peregrina's new blog where she is currently providing details and links about the online books that she has created using Tarheel Reader. Her books review vocabulary from the Cambridge Latin Course. She'll continue to update her blog as she creates more mini-book reviews and activities. (Latin currently leads all languages, except English in the foreign languages section with over 300 online books!)

I'm sure Anna Peregrina will think of other things to add to her blog too!

All Those Latin Endings!

Many people are aware of Paul Diederich's Word Frequency count and the Whitaker's Words dictionary web applet that has been built upon it. Diederich also did an Ending Frequency, which includes a list of Eighteen Common Endings as well as a set of Rules Governing Variable Endings, plus The Twenty Two Rare Endings and some Penultimate Signs. If you are having trouble getting all those inflections straight in your head, you might want to take a look at The Frquency of Latin Words and Their Endings.

The Saturnalia Solution

A columnist for the Bangor Daily News advises recent graduates and other job seekers to keep a positive attitude during their search for employment, explaining how "[getting] a grip on a little ancient history" can help them feel less alone and more upbeat about their plight. Read "Jobless? Party in the Spirit of Rome" (10 October 2009) by Rosemary Herbert.

Practice Your Declensions!

The Latin Library has a simple online quizlet for practicing the five Latin declensions.

North American Institute for Living Latin Studies Online

SALVI, the website for the Septentrionale Americanum Latinitatis Vivae Institutum, otherwise known as the North American Institute for Living Latin Studies, is back online again. The new website includes added features, including a resources page, information about the annual Rusticatio, and a community page.

Appreciating Ecclesiastical Latin!

If you have an interest in Ecclesiastical or Church Latin and Latin grammar, you'll enjoy visiting the Latin Appreciation Workshop blog. There are many links to Latin prayers, chants and music. This a great example of a small group of interested people getting together to learn some Latin for fun and enrichment.

Message from Reginald Foster

Those of you who have taken Latin courses from Fr. Reginald Foster in Rome will be happy to hear from him. For many years, Fr. Foster served as the Pope's Latinist and also conducted summer courses for Latin teachers and graduate students in Rome. He sends his greetings in both Latin and English via YouTube!

Twenty Years of Pompeiiana! Nine Years to Go!

Andrew Reinhard has just announced that 20 volumes of Pompeiiana Newsletter have been placed online so far! Nine volumes remain to be placed online!

For those of you who are too young to remember, the Pompeiiana Newsletter was published for Latin students by Bernard Barcio from 1974 through 2003. Much of the material in the newsletter was contributed by its readers. All 229 issues of these treasured Latin comics, stories, games, and articles are being made freely available to all on the Pompeiiana Blog.

Andrew has been adding one issue per day, so keep checking back to enjoy Pompeiiana once again or for the first time!

Useful Conversational Greek for the Classroom!

Many Latin teachers have found that introducing conversational Latin into their classrooms is not only fun and motivational for their students, but also helps them learn the language faster and better. Now Ancient Greek teachers and students can get in on the conversation too with some simple classroom expressions in Attic Greek from the University of New Mexico.

Math, Science, History and Latin connection

Science Daily is reporting that "buried coins may hold key to solving mystery of ancient Roman population." (6 October 2009) In a fascinating story, a biologist and a historian have concluded that ancient Rome was not as populated as previously believed. Read the article at Science Daily to see this fascinating connection between mathematics, science, numismatic history and Latin.

Latin for Children

Evan Millner has added a new component to the Latinum course, entitled Latin for Children, which offers short lessons (typically one minute maximum) introducing Latin through the Direct method , which is also sometimes called the Natural method or Immersion method. These lessons utilize flash animation and audio language.

(Find out more about Latin language teaching methodologies.)