Teaching "Learn to Read Latin"(Keller/Russell) in HS

[soothsayerhost]

Dear All,

This is my first post here.

In my capacity as the new (and sole) Latin teacher at my school in suburban NYC area, I've been given the exciting opportunity to revamp our entire Latin curriculum. Students here had been using the Cambridge Latin Course, but I am very interested in switching to Andrew Keller and Stephanie Russell's textbook and workbook set "Learn to Read Latin" as I appreciate a more rigorous grammatical approach with exposure to more "real Latin." My school is academically very high performing and, after interviewing several top students who had done Latin 1, 2, and 3 with the Cambridge series, they reported that they often felt it was too easy, that the story eventually felt boring, and that they did not feel academically challenged. Additionally, they thought that the grammar was not rigorously presented enough and that they did not feel adequately prepared for reading real texts by Classical authors.

As opposed to the Cambridge Latin series, which seems to be widely used in the K-12 space, it is hard to find examples of high school teachers using LTRL. There is also no teachers manual. Maybe I'm missing something, but I am having difficulty finding examples or discussions online of how teachers are implementing this book at the high school level as opposed to the college level (I've found many university syllabi using using Google). The two authors are currently high school teachers, so I'm surprised more is not said about curricular implementation in the preface.

I was wondering if anyone in this community would be able to share a sample unit plan or syllabus of how you use the book in a high school setting or direct me to external resources in this regard? I'm in the process of just roughly plotting out how to stretch this book over 2 years, but as any teacher knows, it's really helpful to get a sense of what other people who have used this book have done successfully.

To be more specific: in their introduction, the authors state that 3 weeks per chapter should be spent at the college level with "more time" in high school and that the material could be covered in two or three years. Though I have many years experience teaching college students, I am new to teaching HS, so it would be really helpful to me to hear from anyone who uses this book for two year long Latin 1 or 2 courses in terms of how much more than 3 weeks per chapter is realistically allotted for a 9th/10th grade Latin 1 class and Latin 2 class etc. including exercises from the workbook? Do you personally use it for just the first two years of high school Latin or do you also use it over three years or part of a third year (Latin 3)? A major concern I have with Latin 1, in particular, is going too hard and fast at the beginning so that I end up creeping out the students or turning them off from Latin because it seems too intense or difficult, that grammar is hard and unpleasant. I understand that this is why books like Ecce Romani, Cambridge, and Oxford Latin are appealing for k-12 students, but realistically I want them to learn a lot in Latin 1 and 2 and NOT switch to Spanish or French. In other words, how I implement this matters a lot to my program. I'm hoping a veteran teacher might give me an idea of how to implement this text, as I want to grow my program and teach Latin as well as I can with a high level of rigor without doing too much too soon or having it be too intense for the students because of my lack of experience with the text.

I appreciate any and all responses that might be helpful. Thanks!

[certis]

Hi. My english is not very sound but have you posted the authors? Keller kindly
answers emails addressed to him.

[metrodorus]

Hello, I think a better forum for this post is one of the Facebook groups populated by Latin teachers; this site is mainly (but not only) used by autodidacts, and you will get a better informed response there.
I would suggest this FB group - Teaching Latin for Acquisition.https://www.facebook.com/groups/AcquireLatin/

[soothsayerhost]

Thanks for your input, I've decided to move this discussion over to Facebook.