In 2022 I made a Latin video in which I retold the Christmas nativity story in Latin using pictures from a picture storybook. (The version below is told in Classical pronunciation, but I also made an Ecclesiastical version in case that was your school’s preferred pronunciation.)

Now I’ve made a sequence of lesson activities for this video in the style of pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening tasks which are used in Communicative Language Teaching.

As language teachers, we don’t just want to randomly put a video in front of students and afterwards never refer back to it again. We want to integrate the video into a meaningful lesson or unit of learning. So for example, students should be adequately prepared to understand the text they are about to watch (with the pre- activities), have some simple task to complete while paying attention to the video (the while- activities), and be given opportunities to extend and deepen their interaction with the language and concepts in the text (the post- activities).

In this set of activities, I start by previewing some of the vocabulary that will appear in the video by showing some of the words alongside pictures, and getting students to answer simple Latin questions with those new words. The words appear again in a plot summary of the text, where students need to put the events into a logical narrative order. Then while students are watching, they answer short true/false questions to collect information about the characters in the story. After watching, they read recounts of the same story told by different characters, identify which character ‘wrote’ each version, and summarise which details are more prominent in the accounts of each version of the story.

The point is not necessarily for students to dissect every word in the story, or to extract a grammar rule, but to focus on listening and reading with understanding, while staying in the target language as much as is practical.

(As a caveat, the video is explicitly narrated from a Christian perspective – if your school has a policy about the use of religious materials in class, be aware of this.)

The link below downloads a word document version of the activities worksheet (the word version can be edited):

And here is a pdf in case it is easier for you to view:

If you notice any typos, let me know and I can easily change the files.

Sample Lesson Plan

I’ve also copied out here a sample lesson plan. This lesson plan is for a 50 minute period with year 9 Latin students. You can obviously modify it to fit your circumstances.

Learning Intentions

• increase our fluency in Latin
• enjoy the story of Christ’s birth
• appreciate different characters’ perspectives on the first Christmas

Sequence of Activities

1. Intro activity: Copy the phrase “glōria in excelsīs Deō” and its translation. Discuss as a class: What Christmas carols feature this line?
2. Read the new words for our Christmas story video & understand what they mean
3. In “The Christmas Story Worksheet”, complete the sections “before watching #1” and “before watching #2.”
4. Watch the Christmas story video; while watching, complete the “while watching” section in the worksheet.
5. After watching, complete the “After watching #1” and “After watching #2” activities.

Phrase to copy:

glōria in excelsīs Deō

= glory to God in the highest

After copying the phrase, try to remember: what Christmas carol(s) feature this line?

Answer:

(Start at 1:00)

Also this song:

(Start at 2:41)