Latin – the World Cup and so forth

from Greg Pallis

(despite England winning today…..ed.)

With England doing quite so badly as they are, I wondered if ARLT members (and their classes) might be interested in a chance to right things… through the medium of latin, of course! So here is a free (as in, actually free), and pleasantly high-tech online game I made, in which you try to win the World Cup as any of the 32 nations – by answering questions on conjugations, declensions, adjectives… or whatever else the teacher decides on. Teachers can easily create their own questions on the site, and set the game to run using those instead, so if you want to have the whole game run by just asking questions on the ablative absolute, that’d be perfectly possible.

The main site’s at caniplaythisathome.com, and if you want to head straight to the latin content, just click the links at the top of the ‘play’ page. My students *really* enjoyed it when I used it with them, and promptly all went home and spent the whole weekend doing grammar revision by playing it, so I’d like to spread the love and see if other teachers get a kick out of it?

American Classics teacher notches up half-century

“For Mr Donaher, the Classics – Latin, Greek – never really died,” is a former pupil’s verdict.
“One Greek class of his is so popular that there aren’t enough seats for the 30-plus students who have enrolled,” says a colleague.
See http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/education/23881878/detail.html to find out about the career of Brian Donaher, still inspiring his pupils at 72 years of age.

GCSE Greek: a talk on Herodotus and Cyrus’ childhood

Those teaching Greek and who are in the London area may be interested to know of a talk to support this being given one afternoon after school next October.  The lecturer is Dr Rosalind Thomas of Balliol College, Oxford.

It is adertised at Steve Jenkins’s “The Classic Library” – http://theclassicslibrary.com/wordpress/2010/06/11/gcse-greek-lecture-herodotus-on-cyrus-childhood/.

Although it’s not until October, booking is essential (but there’s no charge).  So you may want to think about it now.

CICERO – 2010 competition results

The Cultural competition was won by Jonathan Bertulis-Fernandes from Mill Hill School; the UVI Latin by Kirstie Mok from Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls; the LVI Latin by Patrick Heaton from Manchester Grammar.

Thanks to the generosity of the sponsors, we were able to award tangible prizes to 33 contestants. Cash prizes and an engraved cup, tokens from the Hellenic Bookservice, Latin diaries from the Generation Europe Foundation, and a range of signed books. For a full list of sponsors see the list on the website (http://www.cicerconcordia.com).

Longer reports will be published in forthcoming issues of Classical magazines (watch this space!). Contact us if you would like to hear more in the meantime. If anyone’s interested in taking part next year then please visit the website.