The place Generative AI (Gen AI) has within education and schooling has been subject to much scrutiny. Its ever-evolving and growing nature has left many educators and other stakeholders scrambling with questions about how to adapt its approach, methodology and place within the classroom. Gen AI has also been shown to have particularly efficacy in the area of Classical languages teaching. It also has challenges (Ross, 2023). The following paper explores a proactive approach to utilising Gen AI technology and programs within a Latin classroom NESA Stage 4-5/ MYP Years 1-3 in Australia (ages 11-16) (NESA: New South Wales Education Standards Authority. MYP: Middle Years Programme). It also develops some approaches to facilitate students’ reflection so as to improve their understanding of the uses and abuses of Gen AI platforms in their own learning.

We developed and trained a custom AI text classifier to assist Latin language learners in internalising idioms, with a focus on Ciceronian composition. Idioms are mostly language-, sometimes author-specific expressions that cannot be translated directly into another language. The classifier provides interactive feedback on learners' output, effectively gamifying the process of writing in Latin and motivating students to produce more linguistic output. This not only helps learners build confidence, but also acquire a ‘toolbox’ of idioms useful for both output- and input-based activities. We present the results of our experiment conducted across a number of secondary classes in Switzerland. Our tool is freely available at https://latin-ia.hepl.ch/classifier.

The study concerns the use made by Year 8 pupils of Latin using the ‘Explorer’ digital learning tool (part of the digital learning resources of the Cambridge Latin Course). Through close attention to transcripts of students working in pairs using the tool, which provides vocabulary and language analysis of continuous Latin prose narratives, the author notes its value in promoting inter-pupil discussion and collaborative learning. Recommendations include that teachers should consider the positive value of the tool as a means to promote discussion, but that pupils also need to be taught how to use the language analyser.

Virtual Reality is regularly heralded as a tool which will revolutionise teaching and education, yet little research has been done into its use and, in particular, into its use with secondary school students. Through a case study of a Year 13 Classical Civilisation class this article investigates student perceptions of the use of Virtual Reality in the Classics classroom and its impact upon their learning. This study demonstrated students' positive attitudes towards the use of Virtual Reality and that it appeared to have a positive and lasting impact upon their understanding of Ancient Greek sanctuaries. The study is limited in its scale – both in terms of student numbers and time period – but it can, I hope, offer encouragement for greater use of, and research into, Virtual Reality within the secondary Classics classroom.

Before I started teacher training, my default approach to a story in a Latin textbook was to translate it into English. I assumed that this was how you best understood what was happening in the story, and how you showed that you understood. Although I had done other things as a learner myself, including comprehension exercises, my prevailing memory was of translation. Translation is a highly valued and prioritised skill, as seen in the weight given to it in examinations and assessments – though in my school placements I regularly see ‘translations’ that are near-incomprehensible ‘translationese’ rather than fluent English. This means that often after translating a sentence or passage – a very time-consuming activity – you can ask a student, ‘So, what does that mean? What's going on here?’ and that student will struggle to explain. I therefore wanted to investigate other ways to approach Latin stories. I will not claim that we were reading Latin in the truest sense of reading (left to right, at normal speed, comprehending the Latin in Latin and not needing recourse to English), but the three approaches we explored did engage with the texts without requiring literal English translation.

This article offers small-scale research findings on the impact of narrative contextual clues as a form of scaffolding in Year 9 Latin lessons. The students of this research learned Latin via the Cambridge Latin Course (CLC) (CSCP, 1998), which provides teachers and students with meaningful Latin in the form of interconnected stories (Hunt, 2016, 88). As Nuttall has argued, teaching students to read interconnected sentences and appreciate a text's meaning and overall message is what separates the act of reading from parsing vocabulary and grammatical structures (Nuttall, 1996, 2–3). Therefore, while the stories of the CLC can be read as isolated entities, the act of reading requires students to consider the overarching narratives of the stories. Furthermore, as students become confident in their Latin proficiency, it is possible to predict what is going to happen in a story just by thinking about what occurred in the previous line. For example, the first CLC story famously opens with the line Caecilius est in tablino (Caecilius is in the study). We can therefore predict that the story could take place in a Roman house and feature different rooms. Of course, this is exactly what happens in the story. This article focuses on the value of contextual clues in guiding students' predictions and promoting them to read rather than merely parse sentences. Ultimately, I argue that contextual clues, which can easily be overlooked as a form of scaffolding, serve as an invaluable aid for students when reading whole pages of Latin.

Achieving proficiency in reading Latin is the stated aim of nearly every Latin course the world over. However, very little research has been devoted to how beginner students attempt to process Latin when it is placed in front of them for the first time. This paper aims to fill this gap, based on a study of students still relatively close to the start of their Latin journeys. I found that they tend to read Latin sentences in their original order, breaking them down into individual lexical items, and trying to discern their meaning by looking for similarities with words they already know. They will usually skip over words they do not recognise, returning to them later. This suggests that, as they become more familiar with Latin vocabulary and grammar, and so long as they are not taught to read in a different order, they will continue to read Latin in the order it is written. There is, however, a perception among many of the students that grammar is difficult, and so they tend to overly rely on context and common sense instead. Going forward, I would try to ensure my students become more confident with their grammar, as context can sometimes lead them astray. However, it is clear that, rather than just giving them tables and lists to learn, they need as much exposure to the grammatical forms ‘in the wild’ as possible, to promote ease of recognition.

The Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Common Core Framework (CCF) requires all teachers to adapt classroom teaching to support all students (Department for Education, 2024). While the Department for Education's previously-encouraged concept of ‘differentiation’ was well-intentioned, in that tasks were meant to be graded to support and develop all students' learning in a class where there were many different levels of prior attainment, it tended to mean that in practice in the classroom different tasks were often set to cater to the supposed different learning attributes of students. Differentiation has now been superseded by the concept of ‘adaptive teaching’. Adaptive teaching is characterised by teaching that takes account of the range in prior attainment of students and anticipates barriers to learning by providing resources or specific support so that they may all achieve the same intended outcomes. Classics teaching is often characterised by the reading of large amounts of text, both in the original languages of Latin or ancient Greek or in translation. Students in the Classics classroom contain a wide range of prior attainment, cultural experiences and may have barriers to learning, such as Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. This article presents findings of how the use of a blended language approach, involving the digital parsing tools in the Cambridge Latin Course and Suburani Latin course books, improved the quantity of translation of Latin achieved by students of mixed prior attainment and encouraged a more effective use of classroom time to develop deeper comprehension and understanding of the translated texts.

This article investigates dictionary usage with Year 7 students of Latin. During my lesson observations I noticed how much students relied on looking up words in the dictionary when working on translation from Latin to English. I wanted to find out if there was the potential for a more interactive and/or memorable way for students to work with their dictionaries. This action research project was carried out in an all-boys, secondary, selective school. I noticed that when students were set to work on translation from Latin to English, they spent a significant amount of time looking up words in the dictionary at the back of the booklet. Often by the time they had looked up the word in question and then turned back to the translation, they had already forgotten the meaning of the word they had looked up. Additionally, the words they were looking for were words that they had already encountered several times but forgotten the meaning of since the last time they had looked it up or seen it. The research confirmed that merely copying the words that students looked up down multiple times helped them recall the vocabulary better than if they simply looked the words up.

This research aims to explore the ways in which creative writing may be used as a pedagogical tool in the Latin language classroom, in particular how creative writing may benefit students in Latin prose composition. The lesson sequence delivered as part of this research was undertaken in an academically-selective, independent coeducational school in an affluent, inner-metropolitan area. The sequence of four 60-minute lessons formed part of the language (as opposed to literature) portion of timetabled Latin lessons for a group of nine Year 12 students (aged 16–17). As part of their language lessons, the students had been following a course of study in prose composition based upon Andrew Leigh's (2019) Latin Prose Composition: A Guide from GCSE to A Level and Beyond1. The lesson sequence was intended to build on this work by making use of, and thus consolidating, grammatical constructions and vocabulary which the students had already encountered in the context of prose composition. The sequence was designed in such a way that students were required to apply their linguistic knowledge in new and creative ways. Students' responses to the various activities were positive and they expressed enjoyment in the methodologies.

During the course of my teacher training, I have encountered two distinct classroom contexts for oracy: a term that refers to the ability to express oneself in speech. At my first placement school, very few students were willing to answer questions or present arguments in front of their peers. Conversely, the majority of students at my second placement school are keen to demonstrate their knowledge, yet often speak over one another during discussion tasks. In both schools, dialogue is mainly directed towards the teacher; students rarely offer extended answers during lessons, and oral reasoning and argumentation generally take place as a precursor to written work. I therefore wanted to implement a sequence of lessons where the learning was intentionally carried out and measured through student talk and cooperation. In particular, I wanted to examine how far teaching specific oracy skills and providing informal scaffolded opportunities for presentational and exploratory talk can support the development of historical thinking skills in Year 7 (age 11): in other words, students' ability to consider multiple historical perspectives; to appreciate the difference between modern and ancient values; to critically engage with historical terminology, and to present and justify an argument. Students' responses were generally positive and engagement raised. I conclude with further thoughts about future practice.

Over the past decade, the literacy rate of the pupils I teach has been declining. This has led to some problems with GCSE Classical Civilisation, where pupils are not strong enough readers to fully access the prescribed sources. To counter this, one of my former colleagues suggested that we use the Classic Tales resources as the basis for our Year 9 course (students aged 13). The aim is to teach the pupils as much mythology as possible, which is an excellent foundation for the myth and religion unit, and to get them to read as much as we can, using the interactive reader, pdf transcripts, and recordings of the stories to engage all pupils in the class. The aim of this paper is to discuss the successes and failures of this strategy.

The effectiveness of teaching strategies and resources that promote meaningful content learning is most pronounced when active methods such as project-based learning (PBL) are used to teach Ancient History (Molina, 2020, 53). Therefore, this study focuses on a comprehensive assessment of the methodological and historical competences acquired by students enrolled in the secondary education teacher training programme at the University of Cordoba (Spain). The research, which is non-experimental and quantitative, uses a Likert-type scale and involves the participation of 201 Masters students who have completed the course ‘Learning and Teaching Social Sciences’. The results of the statistical analysis show a positive evaluation of PBL in terms of historical understanding and its effectiveness in improving historical awareness. It is crucial to emphasise the advantages of active and collaborative learning inherent in PBL. However, it is also imperative to acknowledge the challenges that students face in applying their methodological knowledge to the secondary school setting. The transition from theoretical understanding to practical implementation is a significant hurdle for many students aspiring to a career in education. These findings underline the importance of promoting the seamless integration of innovative pedagogical approaches into teacher training programmes in order to effectively address the specific challenges of teaching antiquity in an educational context. Finally, this research was made possible by the Ministry of Science and Innovation's ‘Prueba de Concepto’ project, funded by the European Union under grant number PDC2022-133123-I00, and also by the CLIOGEN project (GINDO-UB/187) on Ancient History.

‘Relaxed’ events are now common across the public Arts and Heritage sectors. Although designed with the needs of autistic children and their families in mind, they suit people with a range of access needs. Our project at The Open University asked: what would a ‘relaxed tutorial’ look like, and who might benefit from it? Across two years (2021–2023), tutors in the Department of Classical Studies at The Open University trialled a set of autism-friendly accessibility adjustments to live online tutorials for distance learners on a Roman History module. We found that relaxed tutorials were welcomed by students with anxiety disorders, caring responsibilities, chronic conditions and low confidence, as well as by autistic students. Since the project was concluded in 2023, relaxed tutorials have been rolled out across further Classical Studies modules at The Open University. Their principles and structure offer a new way of looking at accessibility adjustments which could be adapted to other teaching contexts and levels.

This is a review of the activities and successes of the 4th East London Classics Summer School, which took place in Hackney from Monday 29th July to Friday 2nd August 2024. Specifically, it covers our typical teaching arrangement, lectures and trips, and it also acknowledges the generosity of those supporting our initiative.

Critics have argued that the Active1 approach to Latin is not, in fact, an effective way to learn the language. This misconception appears to stem at least in part from misunderstandings regarding teaching methodology, such as the belief that teachers who use these methods neglect grammar or do not in fact introduce students to ‘real’ original Latin, but simplified versions of the texts created by the teachers themselves. As someone who learned Latin primarily through the Active Method, I can attest that this is an unrealistic representation. These methods are not used at the expense of formal grammar instruction; they are a different way of teaching grammar that also stresses the importance of acquiring a large vocabulary for the purpose of more fluent reading. Nor do such courses never progress to the reading of authentic Classical Latin. I will use online descriptions of Active Method courses to demonstrate this.

Teaching classical culture to children can be done through literature and Phaedrus' fables. There are several books on the market that can be used to introduce Phaedrus' fables to children. However, in order to be suitable, the books should follow some requirements of appropriateness related to the use of the language and the values to be shared, among others. In this study, through the analysis of 12 Italian books on Phaedrus' fables for children, it will be analysed how the death of an animal is described through the use of verbs and structures. The research aims at making observations on how some books for children represent cruelty and the adoption of certain linguistic structures. The analysis shows, in the first place, that the authors never eliminate the death/killing of the animal; secondly, the verbs and expressions used are varied but, in most cases, cruel, and direct without making the death softer.

One of the initiatives of Euroclassica (the federation of European associations of Classics teachers) is to set a yearly test for Latin and Greek: European Latin Exam (ELEX) and European Greek Exam (EGEX). They are both available at beginners’ level (Vestibulum) and intermediate level (Ianua). Schools can set and correct them in their own time and award Euroclassica certificates as appropriate. The tests are available in English, French and German, but individual associations and schools are free to translate them into their own languages. Candidates are advised to take the tests at any age when they are ready; there is no charge. This article outlines the procedure and gives examples of the texts and questions set. The example questions are given in more than one language to illustrate the European nature of the enterprise, with an extra taste of how far ELEX and EGEX can spread in the example of questions in the Macedonian language from North Macedonia. Schools should contact their national association for more local information. Yearly results, past papers and more information are published in the Euroclassica newsletter available on the website: https://www.euroclassica.eu/portale/euroclassica.html

This is a review of the activities and successes of the 44th residential JACT Latin Summer School, run in July–August 2024. Specifically, it covers our typical teaching arrangement, lectures, trips and events and acknowledges the generosity of our sponsors.