Scheduling out Great Latin Adventure

[sfb5oieu4894]

Hi guys-

 

I will be starting Great Latin Adventure this fall with my 7th grader. As of right now, I would like to take her through both of books I and II in one school year. Is it reasonable/possible to schedule this over 3 days per week? How much time would we have to devote per day to get both books done only 3 days per week? We'll put the time in if it's not something crazy. Anyone else do it like this? I'd like to move onto Henle, or Wheelock's in 8th grade. She's gung ho, so no issues in that dept.

[sfb5oieu4894]

It's a new day so, anyone want to tackle this question?? Thanks :)

[forty-two]

I will be starting Great Latin Adventure this fall with my 7th grader. As of right now, I would like to take her through both of books I and II in one school year. Is it reasonable/possible to schedule this over 3 days per week? How much time would we have to devote per day to get both books done only 3 days per week?

Well, looking at it logically, there are 25 chapters in Levels I & II. Each chapter contains:

*Vocabulary - generally 15 words per chapter, though Level I starts off with fewer words (5 in Ch 4), and builds up to 15/ch.

*Grammar Lesson - author suggests 2-3 lesson periods

*Study sheet - fill-in-the-blank, 2 pages, 20-30 questions

*Derivative worksheet - fill-in-the-blank, 2 pages, ~20 questions

*Translation worksheets - 2 per chapter, 2 pages, ~10 sentences to translate plus some declining/conjugating and fill-in-the-blank questions.

*Vocab Pre-Quiz - 1 page, done mid-chapter

*Chapter Quiz - 2 pages

 

GLA has two types of chapters: Latin-to-English (L-to-E) and English-to-Latin (E-to-L). The seven E-to-L chapters are largely review, in that there is no new vocab or grammar, but, as the grammar lesson and the translation worksheets focus on applying the vocab/grammar to translate from E-to-L, they will likely still take as much time as an L-to-E chapter.

 

Assuming a 36 week school year, studying GLA 3x/wk gives you 108 lesson periods, which works out to 4 days per chapter, with 8 extra. One possible schedule:

*Day 1 - Introduce vocab and do grammar lesson.

*Day 2 - Do study sheet, derivative sheet, and vocab pre-quiz.

*Day 3 - Do both translation sheets.

*Day 4 - Take chapter quiz. (This would likely be a shorter day; you could take a breather or use the time to start on the next lesson's vocab and grammar.)

 

Of course you could mix up which worksheets you do on days 2 & 3 (split up the translation sheets and do the derivatives on day 3, for example).

 

How much time would each day take? GLA has nice samples on their website - they have most of chapters 17 and 22 and all of chapter 4. You and your dd can look over them and see how much time you think it would take to work through each part of the chapter, and evaluate if you could do that on a four day schedule. It looks dicey to me, but even if you think you can, you still would have very little wiggle room if your dd struggled with some of the chapters - only eight spare days, or you would need to work into the summer.

 

Honestly, my opinion is that you should *plan* to work through the summer. This would give you more time to work through the books (50 three day weeks would give you 2 weeks/6 days per lesson - giving you an extra grammar lesson day and an extra worksheet day) and would prevent your dd from forgetting everything (and thus wasting all her hard work) by doing no Latin for 2-3 months.

 

If you really want a summer break, I'd recommend picking up a cheap copy of Cambridge Latin Course Unit 1 (Amazon has used 3rd editions for just a few dollars), and have her just read the stories over the summer to keep her Latin up. The grammar introduced is roughly comparable, and it would give her a chance to practice reading Latin (and the stories are fun).

 

(Really, I'd recommend CLC as a supplement even if you do go through the summer. It's a nice break, and all the reading really helps consolidate the grammar. I recently took a break from my main Latin text (Lingua Latina) and read through 2/3 of CLC 1, and it significantly increased my Latin reading ability.)

 

HTH

[sfb5oieu4894]

Thank you so much for taking the time to write that out. That was exactly the kind of help I needed. I really appreciate you going to the trouble. This will help me get where I need to be. Thank you for the sound advice as well!