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A classroom activity leads to a year-long project and presentation to CAMWS .
Tom ’ s students showed enthusiasm and motivation that surprised him . During the fall , his twelve students first created a transcription , then a glossary of words , and a commentary . They revised these in the spring and then created a translation . At the end of the project , students wrote reflections detailing the obstacles they faced , how they overcame them , what surprised them most , and what they had taken away from the experience . Finally , the class presented their project to parents and other students during a special school event . Some of Tom ’ s students even reached out to CAMWS and presented their work to the organization .
Courtesy of The Linda Hall Library of Science , Engineering & Technology
Introducing Neo- Latin to my own Latin IV class .
I heard about Tom ’ s work and decided to conduct a similar project . Tom put me in touch with a scholar from the Folger Shakespeare Library who needed some pages from Ulysses Aldrovandi ’ s 1599 text on birds translated for a paper he will present this spring in Dublin , Ireland . I agreed to bring the project into my Latin IV class . Because of curricular restraints and the small size of my class ( five students ), I assigned my students about half of the text , and I translated the rest myself . I assigned a section to each student , and we dedicated one class period a week to the project , which lasted about twelve weeks . Once a week , students recorded a short video about their work and discoveries , which they will turn into a documentary later this spring .
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