I couldn’t believe it! I searched for Latin lesson plans hoping for maybe the scraps of some poetry project or re-enactment lesson plan—the artistic bottom of the Latin curriculum barrel—but I found an extensive lesson plan for upper-elementary students learning Latin word roots using the 5E structure and involving multimedia tools and collaborative projects to create a deep linguistic understanding. What’s even better about this is that Greek and Latin word roots aren’t given adequate coverage in elementary language arts classrooms, or at least not on mine. What probably took up two weeks of instruction in my entire elementary career is a 5-step, in-depth, collaborative language arts project that not only teaches these roots, but helps students identify the value in learning roots! Okay, okay, I’ll stop fangirling now. Other than being something I could incorporate into an elementary language arts unit, the links to the song, Google doc, and slideshow are all applicable to first-year Latin and would be a great refresher of root meanings as well as a diving board for deeper understanding of the Latin words they derive from.
