I reminded the students that they have their class test next lesson (see Lesson Twenty).
2. We again took the roll using the new method (see Lesson 20). I will stop mentioning the roll unless we make another change.
3. I warned that this lesson might seem somewhat repetitive, especially coming so soon after the last lesson, but I asked them to trust that this would help their Latin develop. I explained that we were going to read the first two parts of Capitulum Tertium together, using the signs that we had learnt yesterday (see Lesson Twenty). Once again, I read the story and used the signs, with the students mimicking both. I noticed that as we went along, more students began to read and sign WITH me, rather than AFTER me. The illustrated version of Capitulum Tertium is available here. Observation: I actually don’t think that the students found it as repetitive as I had feared - I think they enjoyed seeing that what they had learnt by investigating the comic, transferred across to their textbook story. Note: I hope to attach a video of myself reading this story, along with the signs, shortly.
4. At the beginning of the reading we had a short discussion about the words scaena and persona. Otherwise everything in the first two ‘scenes’ was already familiar through our reading of Bellum Civile. The use of the hand symbols, together with the images and the words themselves, assured that the text was well understood. Note: When we begin Capitulum Quartum, I do intend to have the students encounter the story FIRST through private reading from the text without doing any pre-teaching. This will hopefully demonstrate to the students how well the structure of the book itself teaches the students to understand what is being communicated.
5. I asked the students to open their books and write down the heading - Relative Pronoun. I asked them if they already new what a relative pronoun was, but no one volunteered a correct answer. It wasn’t my intention to get bogged down in an explanation now, so I simply asked them to copy down the following into their books, changing colours where I had, and taking note that the word in yellow was a ‘relative pronoun’. I didn't find a need to talk much about this. There were a couple of questions, but more to confirm understanding. I made sure to use the nominative ‘palm forward’ hand symbol as I read through the sentences.
6. I asked the students if they were ready to add an extra level of complexity to this. There was general agreement. I wrote the following on the board, and again asked them to copy it out. I could tell that not everyone understood it, so I said that as long as everyone understood the first set of slides, we were fine, and that there was still plenty of opportunity to unpack what the second set of notes meant. That being said, I did make some effort to explain it, and some students certainly understood. Again, I used the accusative ‘fist punch’ hand symbol as I read through the sentences.
7. We had a few minutes left at the end of the lesson, and it just happened to be the Ides of March, so I showed the students a few Ides of March Legonium posts, and a few Among Us posts (which they were far more interested in).
