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Since it is the Christmas season, I have been trying to incorporate a bit of festive spirit into my classroom. We have been singing carols, translating the Luke 2 passage, and learning about Saturnalia.
The three carols we have been working on are Angelus Ad Virginem, Adeste Fideles, and Rudolphus. Since Angelus Ad Virginem is the most challenging, I made only the Latin 3 students translate it, supplying a couple of Medieval words that they did not have in their dictionaries. I personally love this song, and there is a great youtube video of a cheerful choir singing the first, third, and fifth stanzas. The students, however, have not been as excited about it, but then again, this year’s group is pretty grumbly and hard to please. Adeste Fideles is very simple Latin, appropriate for all classes, and there’s a nice youtube of Enya singing the first two verses. Rudolphus is the carol the students find most exciting because it tickles them to think of a modern, silly song being translated into Latin. Incidentally, there is a link on my blogroll to a wonderful site called Gaudium Mundo, which is dedicated to Christmas songs in Latin.
The Luke 2 passage presents a challenge both to the students and to me. The students have a difficult time with the vocabulary, and I have a difficult time keeping them from copying from their Bibles. But once we get past those itinital difficulties, the students have found that the Latin grammar and word order is much more simple than what they have been translating earlier in the year, and they enjoy translating a familiar story.
There is an old book called Augustus Caesar’s World: 44 B.C.- A.D. 14 by Genevieve Foster that my school’s library gave me when they were clearing out a few things. It’s really a book for junior high students, but it has great cultural, philosophical, and historical information, including a short section on the Saturnalia, which I used today to introduce the students to this holiday. The book is probably out of print, but it’s a great resource.
