In the summer of 2020 I decided that it was finally time to change to a different Latin course for my KS3 pupils. I want to preface this by saying that I have a great amount of love and respect for everything the Cambridge Latin Course stands for. When I was a Year 7 myself I learned Latin from the CLC: I remember the stories fondly and thoroughly enjoy the memes, but, when I came into school teaching in 2018, I found that there were quite a few issues with the reading course. These nagging doubts increased over the next couple of years and now, as HoD of my department, I have decided to do the unthinkable and kill off Caecilius. This year I have introduced Suburani in Year 7, with the aim of phasing out the CLC by autumn of 2022.
First of all, some context. I teach at an independent girls’ school in central London. Latin is mandatory for Years 7-9 and is taught on an allowance of two 35 minute periods per week. By the end of Year 9, my pupils only just finish CLC II, and that’s at a sprint to get to the end of the Barbillus plotline. At GCSE we then flip to Taylor’s Latin to GCSE to drum the grammar back in. Time always feels tight in the KS3 curriculum, and I have always felt that it is an abject shame that we cannot get to the more advanced CLC stories in the later books. Worst of all, when my Year 9s start thinking about their GCSE choices we are in what I consider the least interesting section of Book II of the CLC – Roman Britain.
Even when hamming up the stories in the classroom I struggle to engage my entirely female teenage audience; the closest role model they have is Rufilla or Domitilla, old fashioned stereotypes at best.
Enter Suburani, a new reading course very similar to the CLC in spirit with cartoons, stories, and chock full of background material. I ordered an inspection copy and was dazzled by the colour and excitement on every page. Best of all, the story has an equal gender split of the main characters and Sabina, the first character we meet in Chapter 1, is an average teenage Roman girl (much more relatable to my own female teenage audience).
It cannot be understated how long you could spend teaching from the first cartoon story – the crowd of Romans on the very first page reveals that Rome was a multi-ethnic community (what does this suggest about Roman society?); Sabina and her family are poor (does this change your view of the Romans?); Faustus is erasing a message reading “FAUSTUS EST FUR” (why might someone call him a thief?). The fact that all these stories appear in glorious colour definitely stands out from the CLC books, where the model sentences are black and white (unless you use the online textbooks).
Most importantly for me, however, what makes Suburani stand out is its much more sensible progression of the grammar.
It has never made sense to me that pupils of the CLC don’t meet the 1st and 2nd person plural until the end of Book I. Sure, you can teach the full forms to a class, but without the regular repetition in the stories it is hard to reinforce them. With Suburani pupils have the entire present tense, the nominative and accusative singular and plural of the first 3 declensions, and infinitives by Chapter 5.
Given that Suburani is spread over two books and not five, I feel that I will be able to finish off Book 2 of Suburani in Year 10, leaving so much extra time for grammar revision and literary analysis.
The online resources are also fantastic, allowing the teacher to track pupil progress through vocabulary learning, online sorting games and translation exercises.
No longer can pupils pretend to do their homework by sending me the same screenshot of their work.
Finally there’s the rich background material. Every chapter has several background sections which go into detail about aspects of everyday Roman life. Chapter 4, which I’m currently teaching, is focused on the gods and religious worship in Rome. The chapter begins with Christianity before moving to Roman state religion, Vesta, then temples and sacrifice.
The level of detail when compared to the CLC is remarkable, and Suburani captures a wider snapshot of Roman life. This isn’t just about representation (e.g. Sabina’s friend at the start of Chapter 3 is a person of colour) but about nuance.
Chapter 6 focuses its stories and background topics on how difficult and varied the lives of slaves could be. Contrast this to the CLC with its cheerful coverage of happy slaves Clemens and Grumio, who enjoy adventures around Pompeii and are shown nothing but love by their owners – the choice couldn’t have been clearer for me.
I appreciate that the CLC is changing; the new fifth edition sounds compelling and much more up-to-date. But looking at the online Cambridge Latin Panel, the changes don’t appear systematic enough for what I want in a Latin textbook. Suburani is making my pupils more inquisitive about the ancient world and through it I can make the ancient world more relevant for them. The grammar is much more rigorous and the online resources are phenomenal. For me, for my school, for now, Suburani is the obvious choice.
We’re also giving serious thought to this. I had already felt much of what Sam writes and I’m glad to have it echoed back, thank you. In fact hoping Will Griffifths will be able to come to Warwick for a whole day in June and present to us. At present I don’t know if we’ll be allowed other delegates but send me an email if you’re interested and I’ll get back to you if it’s an option.
I totally agree with the above post about Suburani. I am in a similar situation, teaching girls in 2 x 35 minute periods per week. We have been trying out Suburani with some groups while continuing with CLC with others. The more we have got into Suburani the more we and our pupils have enjoyed it. The grammar is presented in a much more logical sequence and the stories are lively and engaging without being too long. The course is very cleverly designed to start in Rome and then lead the reader around different parts of the empire without staying in one place for too long. In contrast with CLC the Roman Britain section is very dramatic.
Euge, Sam! Even the 5th Edition hardly does ﹟MeToo justice. The CLC has not been ‘fit for purpose’ these 20 years. Hands up those who have spent hours ‘accommodating’ and ‘trimming’ the CLC storylines?