Lively Latin- let him look back?

[dragons in the flower bed]

It has recently come to my attention that, despite more than a year of chanting, my son still can only remember a few verb endings without looking back through his worktext for a reminder. I've been letting him do this because . . . well, what's the alternative? Marking his paper wrong and giving him a C in Latin? :lol: May as well send him to school if I'm going to accept that as a conclusion to our studies. But now it seems like he's using it as a crutch, so he doesn't have to remember any of this stuff himself, just where in the worktext it's located.

What should I do?

[latinteach]

It has recently come to my attention that, despite more than a year of chanting, my son still can only remember a few verb endings without looking back through his worktext for a reminder. I've been letting him do this because . . . well, what's the alternative? Marking his paper wrong and giving him a C in Latin? :lol: May as well send him to school if I'm going to accept that as a conclusion to our studies. But now it seems like he's using it as a crutch, so he doesn't have to remember any of this stuff himself, just where in the worktext it's located.

What should I do?

Well, if using chants and mnemonics isn't helping, maybe he needs to review in a different way. Try these ideas. None will really take that much time, but if you have a lot of different ways of doing this in your toolbox, you'll have him review in many different ways, not just chanting.

These ideas also work for declensions.

1) Create a poster board with a blank verb chart. Take some some index cards and have him write each of the endings on them. Shuffle the verb ending cards up and have him practice getting them all on the right spot on the charts. You can re-use this blank chart for other tenses and moods when you get to them later. 2) If you have a slate or white board, you could have him practice writing them out from memory in chart form or one at a time. 3) I don't know what curriculum you are using, but you could also take a paragraph that he may have read in the past and have him identify all the verbs by underlining them. Then you can go back and have him translate just the verbs -- but he can use the sentence to give him context if he needs a hint. 4) Practice writing them with him. One person does the first -o, then the next person the next one -s, and alternate back and forth. You can also do this out loud. 5) Use a slate or chart and give him the chart partially filled in and he has to give the rest of it. 6) Use the index cards mentioned previously and shuffle them and then do flashcards. You can do this English to Latin or Latin to English. Quiz the endings out of order so he will remember them out of the context of that chart.

The idea is to come up with a lot of simple, but different ways, to review. Varying how you do this keeps it from getting boring and if one way doesn't work, likely another one will.

I just realized you're using Minimus. Try this. Create a couple sets of flashcards. One should include all the names that you've encountered in Minimus so far: Minimus, Vibrissa, Lepidina, Flavius, Rufus, Candidus, Pandora, etc. You can use "servi" as a third person plural. Add to this set "ego," (I), "tu," (you"), "nos" (we), "vos" (you plural). Create a second set of cards with the personal endings. Now use these as flashcards. If you show "Vibrissa" then he should show the card with the personal ending "t." If you show "ego" then he should show the card with the personal ending "o." You can also create a third set of cards with verbs encountered and conjugated. If you show "Flavius" and are working on the verb "to love" then he would hold up the card "amat." You could also have him answer verbally rather than showing a card, though you could start with the cards and then fade the cards out to a verbal or written answer.

Hope this helps and wasn't too confusing.

[Cadam]

On the Latin For Children web site they have a set of free extra worksheets that have been made up by classroom teachers mostly. A couple of them are simply conjugation and declension charts. You list the words and then the child has to fill in the boxes with the stem and ending.

Ds hates them, but , they are working. Sometimes I will have him fill them out with just endings over and over and over. Some kids can learn with chants, my ds only learns what he reads and then writes.