Refresher Day – final details

Steve Llewellyn, the Director, has sent me the final mailing about Saturday's ARLT Refresher Day, which is available as a Word document (sorry about that, but Open Office will read it) here.
He asks me to say:

Sorry for the lateness of the final details. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like to [...]

SATS – two peoples divided by a single language?

We in the UK know what we mean by SATS, but we don't necessarily know what Americans mean by them.
I had an email today from the US, explaining the difference like this:
In the US, we have two different things called SATs. We have an achievement test for the young students (which began as the [...]

Coloured Parthenon

Explorator led me to this from Physorg.com:
“A recent cleaning operation by laser revealed traces of haematite (red), Egyptian blue and malachite-azurite (green-blue) on the sculptures of the western frieze,” senior archaeologist Evi Papakonstantinou-Zioti told AFP.
While archaeologists had found traces of the first two colours elsewhere on the temple years ago, the malachite-azurite colouring was only [...]

Have your say on coursework – soon, please!

This is from Julie Wilkinson, Classics lead practitioner (Specialist Schools and Academies trust)

I have been asked by Chris Maynard (the Principal Officer at QCA with responsibility for Classics) to respond on behalf of the classics teaching community to the latest ruminations from the DfES on the future of GCSE coursework.
The aim of the review is [...]

Asterix game gets 10 out of 10

Your pupils would be rather pleased to get the marks that Ben Jabituya gives to a new computer game.
Asterix & Obelix: Kick Buttix
This game with Asterix and Obelix really kicks buttix!
By BenJabituya
This Review's Trust Rating: Unrated
February 16, 2006 – I just got this game, popped it in my PS2 and was really awed. For those [...]

Are you descended from the Romans?

BBC News has this report:

DNA donors wanted for UK gene map
Researchers are looking for 300 volunteers to donate DNA to trace the ancestors of modern-day East Anglians.
The team at the University of East Anglia wants volunteers who were born in the same place as their parents and four grandparents.
As part of the People of the [...]

Latin and Portuguese

From 'Gringoes':

By Jim Smith
A Little History of Portuguese
After Spanish, Portuguese is the second most widely spoken Romance language. It is eighth in the world in terms of number of speakers. There are over 165 million Portuguese-speaking people in the world; a sizable portion of the world population. For example, more than 150 million people speak [...]

Well done, Hertford Museum

The Romans return
16 February 2006
EDITORIAL – herald.news@archant.co.uk
ROMANS invaded Hertford Museum this week as part of their half-term activities.
On Tuesday a Roman soldier visited the Bull Plain centre and children handled swords and spears, tasted Roman food and made laurel wreaths and pots.
Curator Helen Gurney said: “We had 354 visitors on Tuesday. The real pull was [...]

Classics teaching post in Welling

I see Bexley Grammar School want a Classics teacher for one year:
Bexley Grammar School Danson Lane, Welling, Kent DA16 2BL A Specialist Language College Tel: 020 8304 8538 Fax: 020 8304 0248 e-mail: enquiries@bexleygs.co.uk Headmaster: Mr R I MacKinnon CLASSICS For 1 year only
Main Pay Scale (including OLW) We seek to appoint a well-qualified, enthusiastic [...]

Can you place this Latin course?

An extract from a new Latin course:

A few first declension nouns are masculine. You are only likely to come across these three words:

agricola farmer

papa pope

parsona parson

Surprised at the choice of vocabulary? Youve guessed it – it's a website teaching mediaeval Latin.
It's a fairly official course, coming as it does from the National Archives, here. They [...]