I have always thought that teachers should not teach what to think but how to think, and I wanted to embody this attitude within my own practice of teaching Classics. It was also interesting to me to link this to the ongoing debates in history teaching surrounding the relationship between the acquisition of substantive knowledge (i.e. the facts of history: dates, battles, names, etc.) and the acquisition of second-order concepts (i.e. the framework within which such knowledge is understood: e.g. historical interpretations, ascribing significance to events, understanding causation). According to Ford, ‘the challenge of restoring the link between substantive knowledge and conceptual understanding is one which the whole profession needs to address’ (Ford, 2014, p.33). Having previously taught philosophy, causation seemed to me to be a topic I would be well-suited to tackle, and I was intrigued to discover that there were opportunities to teach causation as early as Key Stage 3 (KS3). In fact, enshrined in the current National Curriculum (NC) for KS3 history is the key aim ‘to understand historical concepts such as … cause and consequence’ (DfE, 2013, p.1). Given that Stanford professor Sam Wineburg (2001) refers to historical thinking, albeit archly, as an ‘unnatural act’, I wondered whether it was possible for 12 and 13-year old students to ‘understand’ the complex concept of causation. But I was also eager to test out some of the pedagogical theories floated at the beginning of the PGCE course, in particular, Bruner's hypothesis that ‘any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development’ (Bruner, 1960, p.33).

While observing A-level students at my PP2 school, I noticed that their responses to classical texts largely consisted of the identification of stylistic tropes. The students could identify a text's stylistic features but they struggled to articulate and develop their own personal reactions to the text. They had been well-trained in this sort of ‘feature-spotting’ and therefore their reading experience was narrowly mechanical rather than genuinely exploratory. Every passage they encountered was put through the same analytical process with the unsurprising result that every classical author ended up sounding much the same. This seemed to me to be fundamentally passive way of engaging with literature. I was struck by Muir's contention that ‘the pupil should not be a passive recipient in the study of literature’ (!974, p.515). Hence, I wanted to devise a teaching strategy that would enable my students to be more active in the formulation of a personal response to the text.

This assignment investigates the effects of various questioning strategies on the engagement and attainment of a Year 8 Classics class1. I became increasingly interested in questioning whilst reading more widely about Assessment for Learning (AfL) for my School Experience Report (SER), and decided that the omnipresence of questioning in every classroom would make it a valuable focus for this report. Building on my understanding of the importance of questioning as an AfL strategy, my aim was to devise a series of lessons making explicit use of different types of questioning and to analyse the relative successes and failures of each approach. This was measured by assessing overall class participation and by specifically studying the responses and involvement of five ‘focus’ students. Profiles of these students are below and each student has been allocated a pseudonym.

Many teachers in the UK are aware of the issues surrounding a grammar-translation approach to teaching the classical languages but do not see any alternatives. One of the purposes of this edition of the Journal of Classics Teaching is to offer a series of articles which provides an overview of an approach called Comprehensible Input. This brief article has been written to provide an introduction to some of the basic questions and point the reader towards the relevant articles.

Over the last 20 years in the United States a curious and likely unpredictable movement has been evolving in the way that we teach Latin and ancient Greek. A set of pedagogical principles known as Comprehensible Input (hereafter CI) has become a vehicle of change affecting our classrooms, our professional organisations and our teacher training programs as well as our relationships with and our positions in world language organisations. These changes to the teaching of classical languages were unpredictable because at the outset CI represented a set of hypotheses and then principles that even their progenitor, Stephen Krashen, thought of as the way into acquiring modern languages while teachers of classical languages had constructed a fortified wall around themselves built on the notion that Latin and ancient Greek were uniquely different from modern languages and, therefore, required different approaches. In many iterations of this wall, only a select cadre of students was thought (and easily demonstrated to be) capable of or even interested in mastering classical languages. This article will examine very briefly what this wave of change has been like in the Latin classrooms and institutions of the US and examine in particular the principles of Comprehensible Input: what they propose, how they are being practised in Latin classrooms, and the obstacles they encounter as well as opportunities they afford Latin programs which intend to survive and thrive in the coming years.

According to Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory, developed by Stephen Krashen, the way humans acquire languages is through receiving input, usually aural, that is understandable; this is termed ‘Comprehensible Input’ (CI). Think, for example, of a parent talking to their child: when they ask the child, ‘Do you want milk?’, the milk is visible, tangible. The child understands that they are being offered milk. Parents don't just say this once, they offer it hundreds, even thousands of times. According to this hypothesis, the input (the parent talking) is comprehensible (the child understands it); the brain is trained to automatically make meaning.

As for the benefits of moving away from grammar-translation to more comprehension-based and communicative language teaching (CCLT), few can argue they are insignificant and dismissible. In fact, the more one hears about thriving Latin programs, reduced teacher stress, increased student engagement, and inclusivity of all learners, the harder it becomes to justify pedagogical practices of the last 300 years or so (Musumeci, 1997). Still, hearing about current changes to teaching practices often leaves teachers perplexed. Where to start? Not only can navigating 40 years of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research be daunting, but teachers are often left with a lack of support and practical resources to affect any change. In many cases, even the change itself is feared.

While many Latin teachers are successfully implementing Comprehensible Input-based practices1 in their classrooms, plenty of teachers are hesitant to do so - and for good reason. One need only follow the discussions on the various blogs and Facebook groups dedicated to CI-based practices to see a predictable arc that goes from enthusiastic implementation to giving up and falling back on previous practices. Teachers who are attracted to CI-based practices are often those who also are frustrated with the traditional textbooks and curricula, and so a change in methods is often accompanied by a loosening of a traditional unit structure, or even the daily and weekly structure of a traditional language classroom. To do this, however, is to confuse the content of classroom instruction with the practices that contain them, the latter being an important element of classroom management.

Latin is no longer the exclusive dominion of the elite. The Latin language is now accessible to all types of students as a result of the shift towards the use of Comprehensible Input in the Latin classroom. Part of making Latin accessible to the many involves divorcing oneself from limiting beliefs about what constitutes content in the Latin classroom. Enter Blaine Ray and Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS).

When I first dreamed about leaving my textbook behind in any serious manner, the thought was spurred by a post authored by Audrey Watters in her blog Hack Education, ‘Hacking the Textbook (Open).’ In her post, Watters describes an event in which teachers are trained to create, cultivate, and collectively share their own curriculum content. I had already spent years modifying my textbook to make it work with the way I teach, and while I still believe that it is the best textbook for a Comprehensible Input-based class, I found myself struggling more and more against the book the further students progressed just to maintain a semblance of comprehensibility. Whether or not the text was compelling—another pillar of Comprehensible Input—was not even a concern at that point.

It's the first day of instruction following the holiday break, and you and your students are eagerly anticipating returning to the lengthy Latin reading required for the springtime exams. You take a step back to observe how your students are approaching a new text for the first time as they turn the page to the next selection from one of the canonical Roman authors. Each student dutifully has laid out before them the Latin text, their notebook, a pencil, a Latin dictionary, and any other references or charts they might find valuable in the moment.

Three and a half years into my journey of using Comprehensible Input and leaving the textbook behind, I started doing research on Free Voluntary Reading. As a child, I had greatly enjoyed reading and it was something my students had a hard time grasping. Similarly, my own brother nearly stopped reading all together when his school adopted the Accelerated Reader program, which assigns points for reading and testing on books. His love for reading was later reignited when, as a family, we started reading the Harry Potter series. I want my own students to have a similar experience and enjoy reading.

As a Latin teacher, I think a lot about reading. Without texts I would not have a subject to teach, and the goal of many Latin programs (including my own) is teaching students to read Latin texts. I began my Latin teaching career while teaching the language to myself as well. The goal (both for myself and my students) was to read Latin confidently and fluidly, from left to right, processing the meaning of the words as my eye scanned the pages. Yet my good intentions were soon frustrated, and I was baffled by a problem which I soon realised was not unique to my situation: despite years of training, neither I nor my students could read Latin in a natural, fluid way. Furthermore, textbooks and colleagues seemed resigned to the view that such a goal was unrealistic or unobtainable. Best to treat language as a puzzle to be solved, or linguistic knot to be untangled, rather than a language expressing a message. Only the most intellectually gifted students continued in my ‘puzzle-solving’ course; consequently, my enrolment dropped off steeply after the second year. Looking for more help, I even implemented various ‘rules for reading’ and ‘reading strategies’ advocated by others, yet rather than improve student reading ability, I felt my curriculum begin to feel increasingly cluttered with activities and processes that stole away from my students the valuable time needed to interact with the language itself. It was not until I began investigating the field of Second Language Acquisition (hereafter SLA) that I discovered some simple, yet fundamental principles about language that helped explain my students’ struggles and helped me rethink language teaching in general.

Krashen's Comprehensible Input theory proposes that we acquire language when the brain understands messages. The practical question then arises: how do we make the foreign words in the message comprehensible to the brain?

This article introduces an approach to teaching ancient Mediterranean religions by using types of classification to compare ancient to modern groups. A brief narrative introduces pedagogy challenges around understanding the multi-various intersections of ancient group affiliations with other aspects of society. Different modes of classification and comparison are presented as a way to enable such understanding. Finally, worksheets meant for copy and classroom use are presented, explained, and detailed for their potential in Classics pedagogy at both the secondary and tertiary levels.

With the changes made in the new US Standards for Classical Language Learning, pedagogy needs to develop to better meet the updated standards for student learning. One of the major changes is that reading Latin is no longer the sole pursuit of a high school Latin class (Standards, 2017; Natoli, 2018). The new standards recognise that students learn in diverse ways and that students need to learn about and interact with the cultures they are studying.

(The reader must decide whether to take the proposal seriously. It is no more of a maggot than Swift's modest proposal.)

‘Why would you choose Latin?’ I have been asked an overwhelming amount of times, to which, over time, my simplified answer became ‘because I didn't want to do drama’. I realised that my initial wearisome and somewhat preprepared speech wasn't able to effectively communicate my admiration for the intricate and sophisticated subject. Not only for how it enriches the mind in school but also how studying the history that comes with it leads to the understanding of the impact the classical times has had on our society, from the way it works to the way it doesn't. For these reasons, I firmly believe that all school pupils should have the opportunity to study Classics.

In late 2017, the Classical Association of Scotland, in association with Classics for All, hired a co-ordinator to commence a programme of outreach and public engagement activities across the country. In this article, the national outreach co-ordinator reflects on the progress made to date, the difficulties faced, and hopes and plans for the future.