Greek Club

Thursday 5 – Today in Greek I decided it would be good to have some review of the first declension and the first conjugation so that we could do some translating next class. So I did an example on the board of the declension and talked my students through it. Then I wrote some first declension nouns on the board, one for each student, and had them come up and decline them. Most of them did pretty well and only a few had mistakes which I corrected for them. Then I did an example of the conjugation and talked them through that. Afterwards, I wrote a verb for each student and had them try. They did not do as well on the verbs and I decided we would have to work more on them.

Thursday 12 – Today I began class by giving my students some verbs to conjugate for the present tense. I gave them hints when they were stuck but for the most part they did much better than in the previous week and I felt they were ready for some translating. I gave them a passage from the text book we were using because it was fairly simple and straight forward and it provided all the vocabulary for them. We set the desks up in a circle and translated as a group taking turns reading the sentence aloud and then translating it one word at a time. We were able to get the whole passage done and I was very proud of my students.

Thursday 19 – Today I decided it was time for the class to learn the second declension so that we could add another dynamic to translating. I wrote an example of the declension on the board and explained how it was a masculine declension that could be identified by its ending. Then I pointed out the differences between this declension and the first declension and also the few similarities that the two forms had. Then I gave a word to each of my students and had them decline for themselves. They did very well and I continued giving them words to practice with for the rest of the class. I told them we would be translating something different next class.

Thursday 26 – Today I decided it was time to try a more difficult passage to translate. I gave them a passage that had the first declension, the second declension, and the first conjugation. In addition to this I also took out all the vocabulary keys for the words they had already learned on their vocabulary lists. We sat in a circle again and took turns reading and translating sentence by sentence and word by word. It was definitely more challenging for my students but they did very well and they were able to complete the entire passage.

Thursday 3 – Today I could not make it to Greek Club because I was sick so I told Mr. Arcenas to give the student s another passage to work with.

Thursday 10 – Today I came to Greek to discover that my students had done very well with the passage Mr. Arcenas ad assigned them last class. I was very pleased and I told them I would give them more vocabulary so that they could do more complicated translating next time I gave them a passage. So I wrote ten more vocabulary words on the board but this time they were from the second declension. I had each students pronounce a word and guess what the meaning would be. Then I told them to add them to their vocabulary list.

Thursday 17 – Today we did a little review of the first conjugation in Greek Club but then we went right into the Christmas Party I had promised my students. I brought cookies and drinks for the class and I read them a book called “You Will Go To The Moon”. It was very fun.

Thursday 7 – Today in class we had two special guests come and tell us about Greek. Laura and Sam were two of the original Greek Club students and Sam as a special talent for reading Greek with all its accents and pitches because Greek is a tonal language. So we spent the class hearing stories about old Greek classes and having Sam read and educate us about pronouncing Greek.