Articles From The Classical Teacher

Keep 'em Guessing
by Martin Cothran
Classical Teacher, Summer 2007

When you have more than a few students in a class, it becomes important, when doing drills, to keep all of your students involved. Let’s say you have twenty students in a class. And let’s say you want to do a Latin grammar drill. A common Latin grammar drill will involve the instructor asking individual students to either identify a certain noun or verb form, or to give a word in a certain form.

But how you do this is all‑important. If I pick a student first, and that student knows that they are the one responsible for answering my question, then the other nineteen students all know they don’t have to think of the answer—it’s time off for them. This is a tremendous waste of class time.

How do I do it so that all the students are involved in this drill exercise for every question? The answer is probably obvious for many teachers, but I mention it because when I first started teaching, I didn’t know it: You must be very careful not to let the students know who you are going to call on until the last moment.

Here are a few rules:
First, ask the question out loud, without any of the students knowing who you are going to select to answer. This ensures that every student, not just the one I intend to call on, is doing the mental work of thinking up the answer. No student wants to be called on and mess up.

Second, pause for the amount of time you think is reasonable for them to think up the answer, which is usually the amount of time it takes the instructor to think of the answer himself, plus a few seconds. The length of the pause will be longer at the beginning of the course term and shorter at the end, as the students become more proficient at the exercise.

Third, make sure your method of selecting students is truly random. If you do it in roll order, or some other recognizable sequence, then the student who responded the time before can mentally check out, because he knows he will not be called upon again until his next place in the sequence. Every now and then, call on the same child twice in a row—just so he knows that he is not off the hook because he was called on last.

Fourth, make sure your method of selecting grammar forms is random. If you go through the forms in some particular order, then the students will be thinking of the next form in the sequence, and in sequence will be the only way they remember it. Don’t ask for the genitive singular form right after you have asked for the nominative singular. Do the nominative singular, and then ask for the accusative plural, and then for the ablative singular, etc.

And finally, in every drill, translate Latin to English first, and then English to Latin. You might give them a particular form of the word “terra” in Latin, and then ask them for the translation in English. For example, you say “terrarum,” and the student’s answer is, “of the lands.” Then go the other way. You say, “Give me the ablative singular form of the Latin word for 'legion.'” The student’s answer should be “legione.”
These simple and few rules will ensure that your class time is efficient and productive.