Exploratory Latin Exam Update
Nava Cohen
Nava Cohen leads the ELE through a season of remote learning and prepares the ELE for the future.
Overcoming the challenges of a test administration window that coincided with the shift to remote learning in spring 2020, more than 500 students from fifty schools took the Exploratory Latin Exam. Students participated from 27 states, the District of Columbia, Canada, Ireland, and Korea! The Exploratory Latin Exam is administered by Excellence Through Classics, a standing committee of the American Classical League which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2019.
This year leadership of the Exploratory Latin Exam passed from K.C. Kless to Nava Cohen (see Summer 2020 issue: Nava Cohen Takes Helm of Exploratory Latin Exam). Kless served as chair since September 2016. Cohen looks forward to building on the success of the ELE and its outreach efforts in the years to come.
The Exploratory Latin Exam looks slightly different for students in different grades: Grades 3-4 answer thirty questions from a core syllabus of universal sets of Latin vocabulary and may choose to answer another twenty questions from an extended syllabus. Grades 5 and above answer thirty questions from the core syllabus and ten questions about the yearly theme. This year, to respond to the uncertainties of what the classroom will look like in 2020-2021, students in grades 5 and above will be allowed to choose whether they will answer ten additional questions entirely in Latin.
A complete test bibliography along with registration materials will be available on the ELE website in early fall. Additionally, ETC has available for purchase an activity packet designed around the core syllabus and an updated thematic packet with printable activities designed around this year’s theme of Daily Life in Ancient Rome.
Registration for the Exploratory Latin Exam opens on September 1, 2020, and will remain open until March 2, 2021. Administration dates for the Exam are January 1 through April 1, 2021.
Results will be mailed in mid-to-late May 2021.
The ELE introduces elementary Latin language and culture
ELE UPDATE · PRIMA · FALL 2020
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