Panoply at the Association for Latin Teaching

This week we were pleased to make an appearance at the annual conference of the Association for Latin Teaching (ARLT) http://www.arlt.co.uk/. ARLT has been supporting the teaching of Latin, Greek, and Classical Civilisation for over 100 years. The conference is an opportunity for secondary school teachers to meet and share ideas, hear about new trends in research or pedagogy, hone their skills, and enjoy themselves. This year’s conference was held on the beautiful campus at the University of Roehampton, and Dr Susan Deacy gave a lecture about Roehampton’s rich neoclassical history and the opportunities that presents for teaching neoclassicism. Prof. Peter Jones spoke about women in Homer, there were sessions on Latin pronunciation and GCSE and A-Level set texts, and Prof. William Fitzgerald of King’s College London lectured on the Aeneid. There was even a performance of Medea the Musical, and an outing to the British Museum’s much celebrated Pompeii exhibition.

My contribution was ‘Teaching with Animations of Ancient Vases,’ a presentation outlining the range of activities that can be done in class around the Panoply animations. This covered using the animations as a springboard into discussions of related topics – such as The Cheat for the Olympic Games or Clash for the Trojan War, using the animations to lead discussions of specifically related points, such as Pelops for chariot-racing, and using them to link to more loosely related topics, such as Pelops for the background to the Trojan War. We also looked at using the animations for teaching about vases themselves, such as comparing the representations of horses in Pelops, The Cheat, and The Amazon (this week’s new animation). The second half of the session looked at storyboarding – which is a great learning activity. There are lots of example storyboards in the info pages of the Panoply website, and for more detail on how to include it in teaching, visit: http://www.academia.edu/Teaching_with_Animations_of_Ancient_Vases to see a how-to guide in the annotated presentation slides.

It’s always a pleasure to hang out with classics teachers, and it was great to get some really positive feedback about the animations and some expert input into our plans for a curriculum-based teacher’s pack. Many thanks to all the teachers who took part!


Roehampton in the summertime