Will Julius Hipponicus please reveal himself?

I've just added a picture of Julius Hipponicus to the ARLTblog, and it strikes me that schools would like to know how to contact him. I can't discover a web site, so please will someone let me know his contact details?

Meanwhile, I copy an old article from http://www.thisiswiltshire.co.uk:

First published on Friday 20 February 2004:
Soldier tells children about Roman times

HUNDREDS of children flocked to Trowbridge Museum as a fully kitted-out Roman soldier gave a taste of what life was like years ago.

Lucius Julius Hipponicus, aka John Smith from Dorset, entertained 160 people on his first morning at the Shires-based museum, giving a sense of what life was like fighting for the Roman army.

Bringing with him a selection of weapons, body armour and kit for the sessions yesterday and Wednesday, Lucius spelled out how different Wiltshire would have looked in the Roman era.

Museum education officer Laurel Miller said: “We are really pleased with the response. It has been very busy.

“The children have loved it and so have the parents and grandparents. We are all learning something this week and enjoying ourselves in the process.

“It is about bringing history to life. Romans are a very popular subject as the children all do it at school.”

John Smith will be at Bridport Museum on 9th July 2005.

julius_hipponicus.JPG

Can you help with sample A level questions, please?

I had an e-mail today that floored me. It was asking about the kind of essay questions that – but I'll paste the e-mail here, hoping that someone will be more inspired and better informed than I am:

I wondered if you might be able to advise me on the types of essay questions that could be set at on Horace Odes 1 and Livy Book 30, both of which I am studying with my A2 students. I would imagine that for Horace they might ask candidates to outline the various themes of Book 1 or to consider the persona of the poet, but I am not at all sure about Livy. If you had any suggestions I would be most grateful.

If you have some examples that you've made up, please send them to me, david(at)parsonsd.co.uk, and I'll put them on the Teachers only section of the ARLT web site.

Looking after the brightest pupils – is this where e-learning Latin comes in?

A report today says that many children who achieved very highly in primary school get few GCSEs. The report puts this down to the number of bright children learning together.

Where 20 pupils from the most able 5 per cent were clustered together in a year group, each achieved an average of nearly seven GCSE passes at A* and A grade last year.

But where there was just one child from this group in a school, he or she passed fewer than four GCSEs at these grades.

“Clearly, the implication is that if you have only one or two children of high ability, then they get lost in the system and don’t get the support they need. A lot of these kids are not delivering their potential.”

See
The Times article.

If head teachers want to stretch their brightest, and isolated, pupils, the internet teaching of Latin that is already being used in some schools seems an obvious route to explore. The problem is the “if”. As I have written before in this blog, my local comprehensive school dropped Latin some years ago because the head claimed that if it was not available to everyone, it should be available to none.

Let's hope attitudes are changing.