Saturday 12 July 2014

No need to be a Classicist to teach this book!


Thoughts of a Teaching Assistant in a Norfolk school, who was persuaded to take on the teaching of Minimus:

Initially, when I was asked to consider teaching Latin I was pretty apprehensive. I am not a natural linguist and had no previous experience with the language; It was the beginning of my first job in a school environment, and the first time I would be responsible for children's learning in such a way. However, as a teaching assistant pursuing a teaching career it was a brilliant opportunity to develop my skills in Latin along side the children, as well as to develop my skills as both a teaching assistant and teacher.  The Minimus resources have been extremely useful taking a lot of the pressure out of planning and lesson ideas. Even when I chose to go beyond the resources and ideas in the teacher's book, they provided a solid cross curricular base point, full of relevant information. I've really enjoyed my time teaching Latin so far, and fully intend to take it on as my language of choice later on in my career, as a primary school teacher. The children enjoy it, and are constantly asking me when our next session will be and what we will be doing. Contradictory to the beliefs of some, Latin is, in my opinion, entirely relevant to children today. It brings history to life and provides them with an insight and understanding of their spoken language that they will not necessarily achieve through more commonly popular languages such as Spanish or French.

 

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