Laura Eidt

Having studied English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Latin in addition to her native German, at various points in her life, she is passionate about foreign language teaching and learning, and regularly teaches courses on foreign language pedagogy. She also works with UD’s classical curriculum team and has offered professional development workshops at various K-12 schools on the art of narration, Socratic Seminar, grammar and sentence diagramming, as well as Latin and modern foreign language pedagogy. As part of her work with the classical curriculum team, she is currently writing UD’s K-5th grade curriculum Latin through Stories, a near-immersion, input-based curriculum that focuses on meaningful language acquisition through communicating ideas and stories.

SESSIONS:

The Trivium as a Framework for Teaching Latin and Modern Languages

For many centuries after the fall of Rome, the main reason for learning Latin was to read and communicate important ideas. Latin was taught as the art of speaking, reading, and writing so that students would be able to participate in the ongoing Great Conversation in Latin. This was possible because students went through the entire Trivium in Latin. In this lecture, we will explore what the three paths of the Trivium might look like for various ages and levels, how to create Trivium-centered lessons in Latin or a Modern Foreign Language, and in what ways Trivium-based language teaching is confirmed by current research on 2nd language acquisition.

Teaching Latin & Modern Foreign Languages Classically in K-5

In this workshop, K-5 Latin and modern foreign language teachers will experience age-appropriate language lessons in the framework of the classical Trivium and informed by current research on early childhood language acquisition. “Grammar first awakens and attunes us to language as we imitate the words and rhythms and cadences of the speech we encounter” (The Liberal Arts Tradition 48), and teachers will experience how to use pictures and gestures to help students memorize songs, nursery rhymes and poetry. Dialectic is the art of asking good questions, and teachers will learn how to do Little Socratic dialogs with their students to explore with them a particular topic, a beautiful work of art, or a classic story. For elementary students, beginning rhetoric emphasizes creative and productive use of language in speech or writing, and the workshop will conclude with a few ideas for helping students produce language in meaningful ways.