The other day, my students were given a crossword puzzle to work on. The hints for the puzzle were fairly challenging. Each one was phrased in Latin and expected a Latin answer, and they covered a whole range of topics from grammar to mythology and ancient history. I have employed these kinds of puzzles before, but this time I was struck by how interested the students were in completing it. Had I simply given them a plain sheet of paper and asked them to quietly write out the answers to the same questions in a non-puzzle format, I guarantee that I would have met with a barrage of moans and rolled eyes. For some reason, when working on the crossword puzzle, that is, questions that you answer inside of cleverly placed boxes, the students do not feel that they are doing work, but rather participating in a kind of game. When the landscape shifts from work to play, it seems the incentive to traverse it is automated. External force i.e. threats of detention; a lowered grade; an angry teacher, are no longer necessary when the students are self-motivated. Perception is an incredibly powerful tool. If we can flip the mindset to perceive the work we do as a game, then the otherwise arduous task of keeping students motivated becomes naught. 

This idea of a literal game is particularly relevant to younger students. As they get older, they can more and more easily endure increasingly burdensome tasks. Though you may slowly ween the children off of more puerile activities, competition, the essential element of a ‘game’,  can incentivize anyone to work harder. In 6th grade, you may have the students compete to see who can recall the most vocabulary phrases, or who can recite the most of the weekly poem. In high school, students may compete for ‘the most elegant translation’. In a perfect world, you would also have the older students exercising the pen in high school, writing essays and poetry in Greek and Latin vying for the most interesting meter or most persuasive rhetoric. Perhaps I am fantasizing. . .

I can already hear the criticism, however. “Young students need to learn discipline. They need to learn to bear the weight of difficult tasks now so that when they get to high school, they can bear an even greater load. They need to learn to love Latin itself and not a bunch of silly games.” I see where these criticisms comes from, but we ought to keep in mind how young our students sometimes are. In 6th grade, they are barely eleven years old, perhaps even younger. I think what you get in return for more ‘labor’ at this age is the opposite of what you would hope. Though a handful may have a dispositional knack for staying organized and working hard on tasks to earn the admiration of their teacher, most students, if force-fed meal-after-meal of dry rote tasks, will likely vomit your efforts back in the form of recalcitrance and flagrant disobedience. Even adults forced into a similar situation would eventually grow squeamish and likely begin acting in a way not too different from the way we see kids behaving. The difference between these to groups of people is that adults usually get a choice to leave if they are not happy with the kind of instruction they are getting. A carefully-crafted introduction to the ancient languages will prevent the ever-echoed “I hated Latin” and hopefully leave a good impression, even on those who choose not to pursue its study any further. 

I have digressed ever so slightly, so I will return to the task I had initially set for myself which was to provide you with some guidance on how you may help shift the perception of classroom tasks from work to play. A crossword puzzle is one thing that works really well for one single task, but you can’t do crossword puzzles every day. Crambe bis posita mors as the old adage goes. I mentioned in the post Memorize. Repeat. the idea of the entire academic endeavor being a kind of game. From 6th-9th grade I have utilized a kind of group point system which has been immensely useful in positively motivating students to complete their work.

Usually, classes are divided into two or three teams whose individuals endeavor to earn points by performing their daily classroom activities well. To maintain the Latin atmosphere, students can lose team points by speaking in any other language other than Latin (check out our post on speaking Latin). That might sound impossible, but in my experience, if you are able to maintain a certain degree of Latin conversation on your own, students can and will follow suit. If you are curious about what this kind of interaction may look like, take a look at our Latin dialogue: Interpellatio, in which a student accidentally interrupts a lesson asking his peer to borrow a pencil.

Notice that in this kind of scenario, there is nothing different going on as opposed to the run-of-the-mill rote classroom, except that students have a positive reason to achieve the things you want them to rather than only negative consequences keeping them in check. I mean that even though elements of a game are being used, the things that are happening in the classroom are not ludicrous. Students can still decline nouns in this kind of system, but an aptly declined noun might earn a team point. A poorly conjugated verb may lose one.

At the end of the week, I tally the points and do my best to award the winning team with some kind of prize. That reward usually comes in the form of a small fruit candy. It may seem trivial, but they were not ever really competing for the candy exactly. They were competing to best the other teams. It is an odd mechanism that the divine mind has added to our human nature, and we as teachers would be remiss to not take advantage of it. The ancients called this quality aemulatio. Quintilian’s old school master seemed to take advantage of it when he rearranged his classroom to reflect the students’ abilities, hoping to incentivize them to outdo one another.

non inutilem scio servatum esse a praeceptoribus meis morem, qui cum pueros in classis distribuerant, ordinem dicendi secundum vires ingenii dabant, et ita superiore loco quisque declamabat, ut praecedere profectu videbatur: huius rei iudicia praebebantur. ea nobis ingens palma, ducere vero classem multo pulcherrimum. nec de hoc semel decretum erat: tricensimus dies reddebat victo certaminis potestatm. ita nec superior sucessu curam remittebat, et dolor victum ad depellandam ignominiam concitabat. id nobis acriores ad studia dicendi faces subdidisse quam exhortationem docentium, paedagogorum custodiam, vota parentium, quantum animi mei coniectura colligere possum, contenderim. sed sicut firmiores in litteris profectus alit aemulatio, ita incipientibus atque adhuc teneris condiscipulorum quam praeceptoris iucundior hoc ipso, quod facilior imitatio est. – Institutio Oratoria I.2.23-26

Aemulatio seems like it might foment vanity or self aggrandizement. That might actually be true at a certain point, and one should keep a close eye on students getting a little carried away, but fundamentally it can provide a fire that instigates self-improvement.

Speaking of competition, aemulatio, and self improvement, join our weekly Certamen Scribendi, where we provide prompts to translate into Latin. The best translations will earn a mention on our site. The newest prompt will be released in a blog post each week, so check back in occassionally to see if you might want to compete one of these days. 

We are working on getting more materials out for you to enjoy as you continue to improve your grasp of Latin and Greek, so keep checking back in for more.

        – Rogerius