Using language classes to teach other ideas

Every year for the last six years, I've sat down with my twos and threes and asked what they want to study curricularly the following year. Then I spend the summer putting together that curriculum. This year, for the first time, a student suggested the American Civil War. It didn't get voted for, so that won't be part of our curriculum next year, but it did spark a really interesting conversation about the things that are reasonable to learn in a Latin class.

The answer is: anything. It's a language, so we can talk about anything we want to. In the last year, we've done science experiments and hypotheses (Celsus proposes a lot of cures for a lot of things, so we hypothesized what they would actually do, and then we tried them all and kept notes on our experiments, comparisons, etc.), math (if we know how many people are in a contubernium and century, etc., can we figure out how many people are in a cohort?), history, reading, and art. I try very hard to touch on all the school subjects as often as I can.




We've been talking about theater recently, so the concept of fautores has come back up in talking about why senators sponsored played. That in turn spurred a discussion of the things and activities of which we are supporters/admirers/etc (great opportunity to use genitive gerunds, too :D).

We made a list of all the things of which people in our class are fautores, and then students spent thirty minutes interviewing each other - are you a fautor/fautrix of this? After each question, they had to ask a follow-up question.
For example, someone might have asked 'esne fautrix fabulas fictas legendi?' If the answer was no, a good follow-up might be, 'cur non?' If the answer was yes, a good follow-up might be, 'quae fabula tibi valde placet?' or 'quid nunc legis?'
They filled out this sheet with the answers.

What a beautiful opportunity to do some math!

They're in groups, and they're selecting the most effective way to graph their findings - who is a fan of what and under what circumstances. Then, we'll hang up their graphs and discuss what we've found about the people in the class and the things they like - how many people this compared to how many people that, what variables there are, what information got left out, etc.

Some target phrases/words:
of the people who responded to this (hominum qui huic responderunt)
of the people who were asked (hominum qui interrogati sunt )
of them (eorum/earum)

I've asked questions like 'of the people who were asked, how many have names longer than four letters?' 'of them, how many are women?' 'of them, how many are taller than I am?'

You could do this with all sorts of things - who is your favorite actor? Under what circumstances do people feel sadness/happiness/anger/boredom, etc? What critters do you have? How many windows are in your house?

It's a great way to reinforce numbers, talk about comparisons, and get in some graph-reading as well, which is a standard they have to master anyway in their other classes.