Latin Tutor

The use of the historic present in Virgil Aeneid VI: OCR GCSE set text – Emma Williams: Latin tutor

Here I continue to take a look at the historic present in the OCR Latin GCSE set texts, focusing this week on the Virgil.

The use of the historic present in Virgil Aeneid VI: OCR GCSE set text – Emma Williams: Latin tutor The use of the historic present in Virgil Aeneid VI: OCR GCSE set text This week my blog continues to be inspired by a random question which was sent to me via WhatsApp by a student: Hi! I’m doing my Latin GCSE next week, and I was wondering … how to recognize the historic present, as I’ve tri...

Today is the GCSE Latin language examination for both OCR and WJEC candidates. Very best of luck to all candidates and the families who are supporting them.

The use of the historic present in Sagae Thessalae and Pythius: OCR GCSE set texts – Emma Williams: Latin tutor

This week’s post is inspired by a random question which was sent to me via WhatsApp by a student: the use of the historic present in Sagae Thessalae and Pythius: OCR GCSE set texts.

The use of the historic present in Sagae Thessalae and Pythius: OCR GCSE set texts – Emma Williams: Latin tutor The use of the historic present in Sagae Thessalae and Pythius: OCR GCSE set texts This week’s post is inspired by a random question which was sent to me via WhatsApp by a student: Hi! I’m doing my Latin GCSE next week, and I was wondering … how to recognize the historic present, as I’ve tri...

Many tutors use the same link with every single tutee. Doing so means that every contact they make - past, present and prospective - potentially has access to the same online meeting as your child; it also means that this same link could potentially have been shared with anyone (either accidentally or maliciously) over time.

While the use of the "waiting room" feature grants the tutor control over who can join each meeting at any one time, students and/or their parents often request to join under a generic username, which can be difficult to verify. For me, that simply isn't good enough. It is not secure or indeed practical to rely on the waiting room as your sole vetting process for who is trying to enter an online meeting when working with children.

I am hyper-aware of the importance of online safety and have undertaken a great deal of training in this area. All of my tutoring sessions begin with a unique, one-time generated meeting link, shared directly and exclusively with you via email on the day of the session. When working with children I do not use the recurring meeting feature, nor do I use my personal ID.

Using a uniquely-generated link for each of your child's online sessions minimises the risk of their meeting link being accidentally shared with or otherwise available to unsolicited parties. Scheduling sessions individually in this way takes up some of my time each week, but it's worth every minute of it. I take safeguarding and my duty of care very seriously, and safety online means doing everything in my power to prevent a child's session from being interrupted by anyone but you.

I have created dozens of practice papers in the style of the GCSE grammar questions to show my tutees so that they can be fully prepared for what happens in the exam. Most students, in my experience, have not been prepared well for the grammar questions at GCSE and there’s a reason for that.

Grammar questions are a relatively new thing at GCSE level. They were introduced to the syllabus in 2018 and most teachers saw them as an entirely new phenomenon. But grammar questions have been a feature of the Common Entrance syllabus for decades and guess what? Some of the same people involved in setting those are also involved at GCSE.

If anything, the GCSE questions are easier – I would place them at between Level 1 and Level 2 at Common Entrance – Level 3 grammar questions go way beyond the expectations at GCSE. As someone who has tutored the Common Entrance for years, the “new” grammar questions introduced in 2018 looked entirely familiar to me and I was immediately able to predict how they would work. In addition, Taylor & Cullen have published a series of practice papers in their books that accompany the OCR GCSE, as well as further practice with the grammar questions. Teachers now have a minimum of 10 practice, specimen and past papers to model for them how the questions work – and they are consistently repetitive.

OCR Latin GCSE language – exam technique – Emma Williams: Latin tutor

OCR Latin GCSE language – exam technique – Emma Williams: Latin tutor OCR Latin GCSE language – exam technique GCSE candidates for 2023 are facing their first exam on Tueday May 16th. I have written recently on specific aspects of the paper, in particular the grammar questions and the derivatives question, but this is a generalised post about how to approach the exa...

How They DId It - Elections in Ancient Rome

How They DId It - Elections in Ancient Rome We step back in time to join the Romans as they head to the polls! In this episode on ancient elections we look at the offices, the voters, and the process o...

The Festival of Flora took place between April 28 and May 3 in Roman times, and it symbolised the renewal of the cycle of life, celebration and flowers. At the festival, with both men and women decked in flowers and brightly-coloured clothing, five days of comic theatre took place - with rude humour included! There was also hunting.

Whatever you're doing this May Day, have a good one.

It's so exciting to have this kind of impact on a young person's attainment. This particular student was used to scoring 40% in his translation tests, but he ended up achieving an A-grade in the final examination. Working one-to-one with a professional Latin tutor for just a few short weeks was all he needed to excel.

Derivatives – Emma Williams: Latin tutor

"It was the year 2000, I was an NQT and I was standing in front of a class, teaching a subject I had not trained in, perhaps rather less well-prepared than I should have been."

Derivatives – Emma Williams: Latin tutor Derivatives It was the year 2000, I was an NQT and I was standing in front of a class, teaching a subject I had not trained in, perhaps rather less well-prepared than I should have been. The class were reading The Turn of the Screw, a novella I felt reasonably confident I could bluff my way through....

What on earth can be done at this late stage prior to an examination? Actually, plenty!

The best way to prepare students for the grammar questions in the GCSE examination is to show them as many examples as possible in quick succession – select just this part of each paper and do one after the other. This way, students are able to spot how certain words, phrases and expectations are repeated time and time again.

I usually find that within a couple of half-hour sessions I can take a child from one who was previously mystified as to what to do and guessing wildly to one who is able to score 8, 9 or even 10 out of 10 consistently in that part of the paper. Not bad for 60 minutes' work!

First impressions of the new Book II

This teacher and blogger has wildly different views from me - they really like CLC Book 2! Somebody's got to, I suppose ...

First impressions of the new Book II From accessible cultural background sections to more human stories, Elizabeth Hayes, Curriculum Lead Tutor at the University of Sussex, shares some first impressions of the new CLC 5th edition, Book II.

Like riding a bike – Emma Williams: Latin tutor

Like riding a bike – Emma Williams: Latin tutor Like riding a bike You’d think I’d have managed one full academic year before ending up back in the classroom. And not just any classroom. My classroom – or at least, the one that was mine for 13 years. But an argument between his elbow and some uneven ground has left my successor incapacitate...

One of the most important things that students need to know is that forgetting is crucial. Forgetting is not the enemy; forgetting is part of the learning process. Once students gain confidence with this, what they begin to realise is that their brains take less and less time to recall what they have seemingly forgotten with each reboot. The process of recall in and of itself is what cements learning and is crucially important. I have written before about the dangers of the forgetting curve, as posited by psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, when it comes to memorisation; but what the forgetting curve actually shows is that forgetting is not just inevitable, it is an integral part of the memorisation process. We cannot learn a large amount of information without allowing ourselves time to “forget” it prior to forcing ourselves to recall it again.

It is therefore important to reassure students that retrieval can and indeed should feel a little uncomfortable – you are forcing yourself to try and remember, and in these days of Google that is not something we do very much. Many a happy evening was spent back in the day when a friend might say “who wrote that song?” and one would spend several minutes (or several hours!) trying to remember collectively. Now we can just look up the answer, we’re perhaps less trusting of the fact that if we wait long enough, the answer will pop into our heads. As Daniel T. Willingham puts it, “people usually believe that forgetting happens over time; if you don’t use a memory, you lose it. This may be hard to believe, but sometimes the memory isn’t gone—it’s just hard to get to.” This is the most remarkable thing demonstrated in the whole process – you might think you’ve forgotten something, but the memory is actually there, lurking deep inside your brain. Retrieval teaches you how to access it.

So let’s hear it for forgetting. Forgetting is important. Forgetting should be exploited as part of the learning process. And let’s face it, forgetting is unavoidable. All we can do is work with it.

Roman gateway rebuilt in ‘exact spot’ at site of invasion of Britain

Roman gateway rebuilt in ‘exact spot’ at site of invasion of Britain Reconstructed rampart structure that stood almost 2,000 years ago will open to visitors in Richborough, Kent

You’ve had enough – Emma Williams: Latin tutor

Something a little different this week, but it genuinely reflects what was on my mind. This week's blog post is entitled "you've had enough".

You’ve had enough – Emma Williams: Latin tutor You’ve had enough “You’ve had enough” he said, as he pushed her glass away. “You’ve had enough” he said, with a tone so dismissive and disapproving that I looked up from my book and glared across the room, judging this man I had never met in a marriage I had no knowledge of in a room f...

How exactly do we transfer knowledge reliably into our longterm memory? Well, an important part of the process is giving yourself time to forget something first.

Some students have been taught about spaced learning in school, as part of a drive towards empowering them with a knowledge of metacognition (which is thinking about thinking – a knowledge of how we learn – exactly what we’re talking about now). This is fantastic. In schools that are switched on to this, students are taught to repeat their self-testing processes regularly, leaving a gradually-increasing length of time between each revisit. Some schools teach a fixed process, helping students by advising them on exactly how long those varied gaps should be, but the truth is that it doesn’t necessarily matter. In principle, students should be regularly testing themselves on things they learnt that day, that week, that fortnight, that month, that year; the best and most effective kind of retrieval draws on a range of learning distances.

Students can actually exploit their brain’s capacity for forgetting and retrieval during very short spaces of time, and I make this happen within my 30-minute tutoring sessions. As one simple example, I might help a student commit the endings of the 1st declension to memory in the first few minutes of a session. I might then test them on a series of nouns which follow the first declension. I will then return to the endings of the 1st declension and test them on those again at the end of the session. That’s a typical 30-minute lesson arc and allows for “forgetting time”. However, even within that arc, I will further exploit the brain’s ability to switch from one focus to another and, as a result, to temporarily forget; during the process of testing a student on the 1st declension endings, once they reach a certain level of competence, I might suddenly ask them a couple of random questions to distract them from the table: do they know how many declenions there are? What gender are most nouns in the 1st declension? Can they think of any words that they know which follow the pattern of the 1st declension? Once their brain has been distracted for a minute or or so by this Q&A, I will then ask them to recall the endings of the 1st declension once again. The constant exploitation of forgetting time increases the impact of learning because it is forcing the brain to retrieve something which has briefly exited the working memory (i.e. the student has not spent the last minute actively thinking about it and holding it in their head).

After a short break over the Easter weekend it's back to the second of three incredibly busy weeks during the school holidays, throughout which I am seeing a huge number of Year 11 students for extra sessions. As of today it's now just five weeks to go until the first GCSE Latin exam!

Man’s inhumanity to man – Emma Williams: Latin tutor

As a Classicist, I cannot help but see the story of Christ within its ancient milieu and recall the incalculable number of wasted human lives that resonate through its narrative.

In the name of ‘Roman civilisation’, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people were tortured and crucified, forgotten souls with no afforded legacy of reverence or pious gratitude to preserve them in the conscious minds of the living.

At this time of year, I choose to remember them.

From the archives: a humanist persective on the crucifixion story.

Man’s inhumanity to man – Emma Williams: Latin tutor Man’s inhumanity to man A humanist perspective on the crucifixion story. Historical, mythical or legendary, the crucifixion of Christ represents the story of many. Whether or not the man called Jesus existed – and the modern scholarly view on this seems to range from ‘probably’ to ‘possibl...

It’s never too late when it comes grammar the questions – Emma Williams: Latin tutor

It's never too late when it comes to the grammar questions.

It’s never too late when it comes grammar the questions – Emma Williams: Latin tutor It’s never too late when it comes grammar the questions Have I mentioned that this month is busy? For a few days it seemed like every time I picked up my smartphone there was a new message from an anxious parent seeking last-minute support for their child. GCSE Latin may be somewhat niche, but it ...

People seriously undestimate the importance of forgetting time. I’m not talking about forgetting painful experiences here (although the ability to wipe those from one’s memory might also be considered rather useful); I’m talking about giving your brain time to “forget” what it has learned, purely so that you can force it to remember again. Think that sounds weird? Well, let me persuade you.

Memory, as cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham so famously defined it, is the residue of thought. Students will struggle to remember things which they have not thought deeply about and the best teachers use a combination of methods to get students to think actively about what they need to remember. There has been much welcome discussion in recent years about retrieval practice in the classroom, and alongside that the importance of spaced learning. Believe you me, this was not the focus during my teacher-training 21 years ago, indeed there was little to no interest shown by the lecturers in how memory works, little focus on the inescapable fact that a child’s success or failure in the education system is defined by their ability to use their memory effectively – both their working memory and their longterm memory.

In the simplest possible terms, a person’s working memory is what they use to process information and acts like a kind of holding pad. Memory expert Tracy Alloway describes the working memory as like a post-it note: capable of holding only a tiny amount of information temporarily, and not suitable as a system for longterm storage. For effective learning to take place in the classroom, it is crucial that a student’s working memory is not overloaded and a large part of that responsibility rests with the classroom teacher. However, students themselves (and those supporting them) can help too. The more a student can do to transfer knowledge into their longterm memory (which, unlike the working memory, is limitless) the better their capacity to learn will be. In my subject, this means that the student should endeavour to learn as much vocabulary as they can, as well as the important noun and verb endings; this will mean that they are not over-burdened in the classroom, enabling them to access more learning.

When it comes to set text work, many of my Year 11 tutees have been told time and again that they “don’t know the text” well enough, that they “need to learn” it, that they need to “spend more time” on it, that generally they need to do something to gain the knowledge required. Yet when I ask them, “what methods have you practised in class?” they stare at me blankly. I have come to realise that most students are not being taught how to learn things off by heart, beyond the most rudimentary of introductions.

I am not naive. Having taught in secondary schools for 21 years, 13 of those years in a comprehensive setting, I am more than well aware of students’ uncanny ability to claim that they have “never been taught” something that they in fact have been told on more than one occasion. However, the extreme cluelessness of so many of my clients when it comes to what to do and their apparent awe when they are taught some very basic methods such as colour-coding and the first-letter technique do leave me increasingly convinced that many classroom teachers are not dedicating enough (or in some extreme cases any) classroom time to learning methodologies. I’ll bet most of them are doing what I used to do in my first few years of teaching – giving students a few bullet points of advice on how to go about learning the texts, then assuming that those students will remember this going forward. But why do we believe that? We would not (I hope) present them with the endings of the 1st declension in one lesson then assume that they will remember those endings for the rest of time – so why should that be the case when it comes to study skills?