Hey momma, look at you! You’ve made it this far with your student! Challenge 2 and Challenge 3 are so rewarding because you finally get to see the fruits of your labor. Your student is growing, maturing, learning to love truth, goodness, and beauty… but maybe still is not loving Latin. Or maybe she is. Either way, I’m guessing YOU have not had time to do much Latin with your student because, really, who has that kind of time? I mean, I’m going into year five of directing Challenge and I do not know nearly as much Latin as I’d like… life gets in the way.
But that does NOT mean we should all just throw in the towel and skip out on latin completely in Challenge 2 and above. This is when Latin finally becomes… worth it. Instead of meaningless sentences about war and mountains and barbarians, we finally get to read Caesar and Cicero and learn history, learn what made Caesar brave and what made Cicero a great orator. This is the time to drop back IN if your family has been slacking; it is not time to drop out!
How? I know, I know. It seems impossible to dive into Latin full force if you haven’t given it your full attention the past three or four years. But here’s the thing: getting something out of Ceasar and Cicero requires understanding the THOUGHTS expressed, not the exact WORDS expressed. That’s another thing that makes it so much better than the boring old exercises (Sorry, Challenge A kids!). This means you don’t have to be a Latin All Star and your student does not have to be a Latin scholar. You can muddle through it and figure out what you can and grasp the story.
Maybe that seems impossible. But I’ve got a plan to help you figure it out. Now, I am using the week 1 translation assignment from Challenge 3, which happens to be a very familiar Bible story. This makes it a lot easier to translate. So PLEASE do not. judge you and your student’s work with the Ceasar and Cicero translations against this. I chose this as my model simply because it is a lot easier to make sense of than the other writings.
Supplies:
You will need your Henle Second or Third Year text book, your preferred answer key, and either some blank paper or my Challenge 3 Latin study guide, which includes all of the translation work set up on pages as seen here, with plenty of room to work. (My Challenge 2 study guide does not presently include the translation pages but I do plan to add them in the future). You could also take pictures of the pages to be translated and print them out on letter sized paper to give lots of room to work. I also recommend different colored pens for the different steps, because it does help the student see her own progress.
STEP ONE
Decide how much you expect your student to translate. Some weeks there are 150 or more lines assigned. Many students will feel incredibly overwhelmed by that. So sit with your student and decide which sections you want translated this week. Start small and work your way up as you get the hang of it. AND DO NOT WORRY ABOUT NOT TRANSLATING EVERY LINE. It is far, far better to come to class with SOME of this week’s translation complete instead of playing a constant game of “catch up” and being seven weeks behind. Pick your lines for this week and carry on. (And keep reading, because I have instructions for what to do about the parts you didn’t translate).
STEP TWO
Ask your student to look at the lines you have decided she should translate and label all the vocabulary she can recognize on her own. You might want to make a game out of this and see if next week she can beat her number from this week. Chocolate is a good motivator, just saying. 😉 (Don’t forget, in this situation, I happened to know a lot of the words because this is a super easy story. Do not expect your student to label ALL the words.)
STEP THREE
Change pen colors. Make it a good contrast. Now, open up that text book to the page where the original Latin is found and check out those footnotes. Those footnotes are your best friend! They give you all the words you haven’t learned yet, as well as unique translations of familiar words. Your student should label all the meanings given in the footnotes.
STEP FOUR
Change pen colors again. Now, go back through and find all the words you still haven’t labeled in English. Look those up in the back of the text or in your favorite Latin-English dictionary. Some might be tricky to find because you can’t figure out the stem. No worries, skip those.
STEP FIVE
Now that most to the words are labeled, your student can do her best to piece together sentences. For example, in the first line, I translated the following words: Said. Pilate. to. Jesus. You. are. king. of Jews? Well that one is pretty easy to put into a sentence! “Pilate said to Jesus, are you the king of the Jews?” A lot of sentences, especially in Caesar and Cicero, might not be so easy to decipher. That’s OK. Do your BEST. The goal is not perfect translation. It’s gleaning the sense of what is happening.
STEP SIX
Break out your old friend, the answer key. Now, your student can do this on her own, but this is a really, really great opportunity for Mom to get involved with Latin even if she doesn’t actually know much Latin. Your student has taken her best crack at figuring out a portion of the translation. Now sit together and read the story in the answer key–because in Challenge 2 and 3, the answer key is really a story book. It’s the story of Caesar and Cicero written out in English. If you, Mom, read the English to your student, she can follow along. Than you can ask her, “How close was your translation attempt to what really happened?” and conversation can flow from there. PLUS, you can read ALL of the English that was assigned for the week. This way, your student can attend community day armed with a knowledge of all that went on in the story, even if she was unable to translate ALL THOSE LINES.
BREAKING IT DOWN OVER THE WEEK
There are six steps here and you only have four days at home. I know, I know. How do we make that work?!? I suggest that you do steps 1 and 2 the first day at home of your week. Steps 3 and 4 can be done on the second day. Step 5 can have it’s own day. And your last day at home before the next community day is a good day to sit and read together from the answer key (Step 6).
This method will allow your student, regardless of how strong or weak her Latin is, to feel that she is participating in the strand and can contribute to class conversation. And it will give you, as the parent, the ability to know what’s going on in Latin. Win-win!
Don’t forget, my Challenge 3 Latin Study Guide has EVERYTHING you need for Latin! It has a place to record all the vocabulary and rules, work the translations with lots of space (like the pictures posted here), and it even has room for recording the definitions of the stylistic devices that are studied second semester. It does NOT have space to work the exercises, but those can be done in a plain old notebook. I created the study guide for students who were really struggling so that they would have a way to stay connected in latin on community day. It’s been a tremendous help to us. There’s one available for Challenge A, B, I, II, and III. Check them out here in my Etsy Shop.