We just finished watching our recording of the National Spelling Bee. I love doing this, every year. It's so great to see middle schoolers up there, being smart, using their Latin. I love the ritual of it, the guessing what the language of origin is before the question is asked, the humorous sample sentences. I've always had a bit of a crush on the pronouncer, Dr. Bailly, who was the national champion the same year I went out in the Northeast Ohio regionals on "poignant." (I missed "paroxysm" in the local bee but advanced anyway; the school used a written test on which I only missed "panicky." Something about those P words.)
More P words in this year's bee... I was excited when I heard "pinetum" (a grove of evergreen trees, basically) because I used it as the name for one of our school teams at the Latin Certamen for the past two years. And I wish that the girl who misspelled "privatim" had asked the part of speech -- because if she had realized it was an adverb she would surely have not spelled it "privatum."
I gave the final exam today, and graded it too. It's always an exhausting and somewhat depressing task, as I start to question either why I'm so hard on these kids, or why they don't study more -- sometimes both. I also graded the 8th grade's Nicene Creed worksheets. Still to come next week - Dies Irae (all 20 verses) for 7th grade and Nunc Dimittis for 6th. But sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. Only one more week to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment