Starting latin in high school?

[Pip]

We tried Latin a couple of times when the kids were younger with little success. Oldest dd will be in high school next year so we have to meet the foreign language requirements. I have a copy of Wheelock's revised 6th edition. Here are my questions.

 

1. Is it easy to use? This would be in a co-op situation.

2. If one has no real prior knowledge of latin, is it easy to teach if one stays ahead of the students? I notice there are extra guides to help along the way.

3. Found a test builder online. Are there any pre-made tests?

4. Is there just the one book? Is this 2 years of high school latin? If not, what comes after Wheelock's?

 

The Cambridge course also looks appealing and may be easier to implement given our lack of knowledge in the subject. How many of the books would need to be completed to meet the 2 year foreign language requirement?

 

Thanks.

Edited March 12, 2010 by Pip

[EKS]

For Cambridge the first three books would meet the two year requirement (the first two are considered year one).

 

I am finding Cambridge incredibly easy to use and my son is actually sort of enjoying it. However, he has also had about a semester of a grammar based program, which is making the grammar more understandable, and I'm not sure if he would be as successful if this were not the case.

[Heather in AL]

My now 9th grade son had only studied word roots before beginning Latin this year.

 

He is taking Latin with an online company and is doing great. They use Wheelock's. This particular company uses the book over a two year period---- Ch1-20 for year one and ch 21-40 for year two. I believe this is how it was set up by the author.

 

While we do own the supplements, we really haven't used them too much. That said, however, I am glad that I have them, because when we *do* have a question or need extra work, we know just where to go.

 

I don't know about tests, though, as my son's tests are administered by his online teacher. What test builder did you find? I would be interested in that for my dd who may or may not take the class online.

 

Wheelock's has excellent support--- there is a webpage where you can go to request the password for the page that has the answers to the questions in the back of each lesson-----*very* helpful to have!

 

Sorry I can't help with your questions of whether or not it's easy to use/teach. I tried keeping up, but because I wasn't working all of the questions, I was behind after chapter 4. :001_huh:

 

Hope I've helped at least a bit!

[Carmen_and_Company]

You also might wish to look into Learn To Read Latin by Andrew Keller & Stephanie Russell. The text may be used over 2-2.5 years for middle/high school students, and 2-3 semesters for college students. The program uses a parts-to-whole methodology with an emphasis on grammar like Wheelock's Latin text, but uses only the actual writings of Caesar, Vergil, Ovid, etc. You can obtain an answer key by emailing language.yalepress@yale.edu.

 

 

I linked you to the publisher's page, and here is a link to Amazon's Learn To Read Latin page.

 

I plan to have Storm begin Learn To Read Latin once she finishes Oxford Latin II.