a joint project and presentation by John Bracey, David Maust, Lance Piantaggini, and John Piazza.
This page is for Latin teachers who are interested in implementing a unit structure that is based on CI practices, is flexible enough to incorporate a variety of textbooks, resources, and curricula, is differentiated, and minimizes prep time.
CALP refers to Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency, and this unit structure is based on efforts to help students to develop these skills. Much of what students experience in a CALP unit, might seem familiar from their 2-4th grade classrooms.
In the development of this unit structure, we have benefited from the work of Tina Hargaden and others in the FB groups “CI Liftoff” and “CALP in World Language.” Our work has been to adapt the unit structures to the specific needs of Latin teachers.
This project took shape as a presentation at the 2019 ACL Institute . It is our response to the requests by Latin teachers for ways to teach historical content of the ancient Roman world in accessible Latin, even if those teachers are not confident in their Latin speaking ability. We also acknowledge the very real risk of burnout that teachers face, and so minimizing prep time is a priority in this kind of unit design.
These strategies could work at any level, given the right tweaks, but the version we are presenting here is ready-made for Levels 1 and 2 (or mixed level)
The Pasco school district has created a useful resource called Project GLAD strategies (Guided Language Acquisition Design), and this document has guided our work.
Also, I have compiled notes based on the units I taught during the 2018-19 academic year. Those can be found in the presentation link above.
Additional links to resources:
CALP workshop manual