...that take the theory into account

Assuming that classroom trust and interaction conducive to learning such as that described here and here are established, classroom practices for Latin acquisition boil down to two things:

1. Providing compelling messages in Latin that your students can understand.
2. Creating or seizing opportunities for students to engage in meaningful Latin-using tasks and interactions.

1. Providing compelling messages...

...consists mainly of speaking to your students in Latin they can understand and providing them with texts suitable for Extensive Reading. For Novice and Intermediate readers, the Latin pickings are slim, but that’s changing. (See Materials below; see Resources below for ways of improving your own Latin.)

You don’t have to be an experienced speaker to start using powerful techniques for helping your students develop their Mental Representation of Latin. I recommend this sequence, moving from "beginner" techniques to advanced ones:

• Try these baby steps for working simple Latin communication into your classroom routines.
• Learn the basic technique of Circling sentences from a text. The text doesn't have to be Golden Age literature. It can be a passage in a textbook or a three-sentence story you write. This article includes a scripted classroom interaction in Latin with commentary, introducing Circling and ways to expand from Circling.
• Extend and consolidate almost any classroom interaction or text with the incredibly simple, deceptively powerful Write & Discuss.
• Introduce student-completed Quirky Scripts that you can return to again and again.
• Whenever you’re reading with your students, try some of these pre-reading, reading, and post-reading activities compiled by Keith Toda.
• Incorporate Good Idea / Bad Idea into your routines.
• Generate Latin Q&A from pictures, including Optical Illusions, pictures of interesting inventions, and other quirky pictures. Don't hesitate to script your questions--even fluent speakers do this when they're getting started with strategic question-asking.
• Generate Latin interaction through concrete items in or near your classroom, as in Rando Mitem or How to Use Your Windows. Again, don't be afraid to script some questions.
• As soon as you're comfortable with Circling in general, try Circling statements about your students.
• Make Discipulus/a Illustris or a similar activity a regular feature of your class.
• Try Asking a Story.
• Try MovieTalk with one of these or another short film
• Incorporate low-prep, scalable, repeatable lessons such as Quirky Skills, Not Today, or Mystery Box (more ideas under Resources below).
• When you're comfortable enough with your own Latin (see Resources below for how to get there), begin class by chatting in Latin with your students about anything that is of interest to them--current happenings at school, pop culture, what they are looking forward to, etc.
• When you and your students can handle it, provide "non-targeted comprehensible input" by means of lessons such as Quirky Feature, Quirky Extended Feature, or Frivolity Is the Mother of Invention.
• Anytime you are interacting in Latin, you and your students can use techniques from Where Are Your Keys? (WAYK) to maximize comprehension, engagement, and efficiency. These techniques are tough to understand or incorporate, let alone master, without live training, but I include them here because many of the techniques, as well as the overall mindset of WAYK, have become integral to my teaching.

Remember, comprehensible input is not a method; it's a type of language: messages a particular learner can understand. If you can say something in Latin that your students can understand, then you can boost their Mental Representation of Latin. If you can talk about something students find compelling (see Materials below), then they'll keep listening and their Mental Representation will grow like crazy.

2. Creating opportunities for meaningful Latin use...

...consists mainly of

• having actual Latin conversations with your students.
• capitalizing on situations in which students can and want to have Latin conversations with each other.
• students’ reading Latin texts of your and of their choosing (see appendix on Extensive and Intensive Reading). See how one successful department is using student choice and its members' areas of expertise to create an exciting, text-based, thematic curriculum.
• students’ creating Latin products such as poems or stories (whether as presentational language or as Timed Writing).
• students’ using their knowledge of Latin to solve a problem they want to solve.

See Bob Patrick’s “Making Sense of Comprehensible Input in the Latin Classroom” and the Resources below for many more ideas about classroom practices.

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...supporting the practices

1. The best "materials"...

...for the face-to-face element of any language class are the students themselves—their lives, interests, activities, and ideas. Interacting about these things can happen informally, but you might have an easier time with a preset activity such as Circling with Balls or a formal system such as Discipulus/a Illustris. As long as you are speaking naturally (sheltering only vocabulary, not grammar), Circling when necessary, students will hear tons of instances of high-frequency features of Latin that they will encounter in any text they read.

2. Non-linguistic material...

...such as pictures (including optical illusions), quirky inventions, current events, students’ real-life skills, mystery, random items, short films, and even the view from the classroom window are all good generators of Latin input and conversation, as long as they are interesting enough to hold students’ attention per se or through the personalization that you create through questions. The linked descriptions include questions you can ask to provide CI at any level using these materials.

3. Reading material...

...is crucial in any attempt to acquire a written language. The shortage of texts that Novice and Intermediate readers can consume at a rate measured in chapters or in dozens of pages, rather than in lines, is the single greatest obstacle facing anyone who wants to learn Latin. (Here's why.)

This is starting to change—check out Tres Columnae Project, Mille Noctes, and this growing list of recently published novellas—but we need thousands of such texts if learners of all levels are to read the several thousand words a week recommended by the Extensive Reading Foundation. Here is a thorough explanation of the principles involved; here is a simple explanation with special attention to Latin and lots of linked resources.

Traditional graded readers and textbooks with continuous storylines exhibit three major problems: not enough text at each level before the difficulty increases, too much vocabulary*, and lack of interest value for most students.

In the absence of sufficient texts suitable for Extensive Reading, Embedded Reading is a valuable practice in Latin courses. See Operation Caesar for Embedded/Tiered versions (not yet edited) of many of the passages on the AP syllabus.

Related: Appendix on Extensive and Intensive Reading.

*more precisely, lexical density, i.e., the number of discrete words relative to the total word count

4. Audio and video...

...in Latin and suitable for novice and early intermediate students is scarce, though there is quite a bit for advanced learners and enthusiasts. (See the Latin audio and video pages on this site and the embedded Google Doc in the Resources section below.) Check out Jessie Craft's Roman Minecraft videos, which impressively combine Latin input and cultural information.

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...for personal and professional development in Latin and pedagogy

1. Resources for developing your teaching skills

• These blogs by Latin teachers.
• Other teachers’ sites on the Links page—remember, anything you can do in another language, you can do in Latin.
• The Facebook Group Teaching Latin for Acquisition.
• The Facebook Group Latin Best Practices: The Next Generation in Comprehensible Input.
• These 10 Essentials of any language program.
• The post Preparing a Lesson vs Preparing Yourself.
• Carol Gaab's thorough description of TPRS®, with a plethora of principles and practices, as well as a sample lesson sequence. Useful even for teachers who do not rely on TPRS, which is one of many ways of providing suitable input to students in the early stages of acquiring a language.
• This epic collection of handouts with tips on language teaching techniques and other aspects of language teacher life. (Though the page is titled "TPRS handouts," most of the material can be used with any method. Some of the links are broken, but most work.)
• Susan Gross's articles and handouts.
• This detailed explanation of many techniques used in TPRS. You don't have to try everything or agree with everything--try whatever intrigues you and keep whatever works!
• Pedagogy Rusticatio, hosted by SALVI (Septentrionale Americanum Latinitatis Vivae Institutum—the North American Institute for Living Latin Studies), featuring five days of focused training and guided practice in a particular teaching system, applied to Latin by expert practitioners.
• Twitter, especially the hashtags #langchat, #latinteach, #loqlat, #iknowitscompelling.
• The Where Are Your Keys? (WAYK) technique glossary and resource page.
• Local, regional, national, and topical conferences for all (not just Latin) language teachers. Latin teachers are attending these in increasing number, with great benefit to both the Latin teachers and the teachers of other languages. Especially recommended are the International Forum on Language Teaching (iFLT), the National TPRS® conference (NTPRS), Express Fluency, Comprehensible Midwest, and TCI Maine, New England, & Beyond.
• Classics conferences with sessions on research-informed Latin pedagogy. The American Classical League (ACL) Institute, the Classical Association of the Atlantic States (CAAS), and the Classical Association of New England (CANE) usually feature such sessions, as do many other regional and local conferences.
• Other teachers’ classrooms. Here are 7 good reasons for teachers to visit each other. Here are 3.5 more.

2. Resources for developing your own Latin

• This article about my Latin learning journey, along with the many texts and habits it mentions.
• The principles and practices Jason Slanga shares in this series on developing and maintaining a Latin reading habit.
• Ellie Arnold's "So, Do You Speak Latin?"
• Daniel Pettersson and Amelie Rosengren's Latinitium.
• Local Latin-speaking meetups / cenae Latinae, more and more of which are happening all over the place – check with your nearest classical association, with the Facebook Group Teaching Latin for Acquisition, and at meetup.com.
• These many tips and sources for online content suitable for Extensive Reading and Listening by Intermediate+ Latinists. I recommend viewing this doc directly in Google Docs or, if you click on a link in the copy embedded below, using Ctrl/⌘-click to avoid a vortex of fun-house windows:

• Latin-speaking conferences/retreats/conventicula (only events held in the USA are listed) :

• Rusticationes and Bidua Latina hosted by SALVI
• Conventiculum Lexintoniense
• Conventiculum Dickinsoniense
• Conventiculum Bostoniense
• NOTE: The SALVI events are basically house parties held in Latin, with both guided and spontaneous Latin interactions, touted for their friendliness to beginners (though there is also Rusticatio Veteranorum for more advanced speakers). The various Conventicula are based at college campuses and are a bit more academic; participants have greater contact with the English-speaking world, e.g., at restaurant meals.

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If you have questions about anything on this page, please don't hesitate to ask by using the Contact Form. or, for direct discussion or coaching, to schedule an online meeting.