Mount Vesuvius casts a very long shadow. It looms large over the bay of Naples but it looms larger, perhaps, in the memories of the many thousand of school pupils who have stood in the horto of Caecilius, laughed, cried, learned and then – in likelihood – left behind the story of Pompeii’s destruction in AD 79.
As I write, I’m trying to organise a Christmas quiz for my old school pals, and it took almost no time for the usual wisecracks to suggest a Caecilius round. Their memories of CLC 1 are incredibly fond. As a gateway to the subject it is understandably popular: it’s fast, fun, and the Latin sentences feel largely do-able. And who doesn’t get invested in the soap opera of Clemens, Quintus and co.?
Yet almost all of those school friends dropped Latin at the first opportunity, in Year 8, and as a Classics teacher it’s been valuable to reflect on the reasons. What was number one?
‘Latin got boring.’
And in close second place:
‘Latin got difficult.’
I remember these friends as conscientious and willing, if occasionally cheeky, and it strikes me now that how Latin was taught, and the course which determined that teaching, may have played a part in their disengagement.
This year I have started a HoD role in a fantastic school in Birmingham, brimming with ambitious and hard-working pupils, and I work alongside very dedicated and knowledgeable colleagues. It has been a CLC stable since at least the 1990s, but in September we introduced De Romanis for the Year 7 boys. And we think it is going really well.
Yes, it has meant old vocab tests and checkpoint assessments and Powerpoint slides are no longer playable. Yes, we are having to think a little harder about Year 7 lessons which would otherwise be routine and effortless. But the pay-off is considerable, and the costs of transitioning are short-term, while the gains have been immediate and will only multiply as the course beds in.
What do we like about De Romanis?
1. Greek mythology as a starting point
2. Authentic access to how Latin works
3. More flexible, differentiated exercises
We were all wary about how De Romanis might live up to the extended narrative of Caecilius’ household. The Greek myths, however, have been a triumph, as you’d expect for a generation raised on Percy Jackson and the Marvel/ DC universes.
Myths also function successfully as discrete stories, and so pupils’ eyes are constantly widening and there is a sense of novelty at the start of each source/ story/ chapter. There is also the advantage that we as teachers of the Classical world are no longer tethered to a very particular time and place for the whole year.
If the pupils are ‘playing hard’ with their Greek myths, then they are also ‘working hard’ with their language work.
One challenge I found both doing and delivering the CLC is that pupils are shielded from so much of the inner workings of Latin – even such basic concepts as parts of speech, or verb stems – that as the complexity of sentences progresses, pupils become steadily confused (‘Latin got difficult’) or become wonderfully creative at guessing meaning, without paying any attention to what’s happening at the end of each word.
The value of learning an inflected language, in part, has to be the way it trains your brain to triangulate, scrutinising grammatical units and solving the puzzle with a careful method. The CLC prioritises product over process, which is great for initial pupil buy-in, but after a couple of terms starts to ring hollow (‘Latin got boring’).
De Romanis confronts at the outset, in pupil-friendly terms, conceptual issues like declension and gender. This gives pupils a much more honest purchase on the subject; they can actually explain what’s going on.
Pupils are very astute when it comes to assessing their own ability in a subject: they know whether they actually get something or not. CLC 1 gives them the sense they can do Latin – and within the confines of CLC 1, they can. But as soon as the language hots up, as soon as conjugation or adjectival agreement or pronouns etc. come round the corner, their confidence takes a hit because their expectations don’t match the reality. De Romanis doesn’t feel like a trad Wilding-esque language course. It is fun and fast, like CLC 1, but it also levels with pupils from the first chapter. Pupils – and especially the weaker ones – appreciate that honesty.
Like with anything, the key to happy outcomes is the successful calibration of expectation to reality, and De Romanis – so far – is achieving that.
Lastly, we’ve enjoyed the balance of exercise-types found in De Romanis. CLC is passage-heavy, a feature determined by the need to keep the storyline ticking over and the desire to give pupils the feeling of fluency. That’s great, but it does mean teachers have to work much harder to differentiate and pupils are consuming a diet of predominantly 3rd person verbs. Sentence work pulls pupils in more directions, and feels more satisfying because they encounter more permutations of the grammar and vocab they’ve spent precious time learning. Sentences are less blinkered practice, you might say. Bloomsbury’s Companion Site has also been great on this front, supplying tons more language exercises in the same mould as those found in the Additional Language section at the end of each chapter. These are free, ready-made homework activities or class-time tests. That AL section also unlocks lots of other differentiation – derivative work, great for building confidence among weaker pupils, and really crunchy extension in the form of manipulation or composition exercises.
Latin lessons on the CLC feel like trying to teach a Modern Language, only with a much older and far less accessible language. And one which will never help you buy a bus ticket. Latin lessons with De Romanis feel like a hybrid of English and Maths. This straddles the ability and interest range of the class really nicely, but, more importantly, is preparing pupils far better for progress – and fluency – in reading Latin: the ostensible goal of the CLC. Time will tell how this plays out with uptake at GCSE etc., but what I am confident in is that every pupil will finish this year feeling positive about Latin and feeling like Latin is the subject they actually get. A meaningful reality rather than a hopeful perception.
For now, though, back to my Christmas quiz preparations. I wonder how a Greek mythology round will go down…
