Curriculum Plan
Key Stage Two Literacy and Latin

In May 2006 I was contacted by the chair of Governors at Benthal primary school in Hackney. He commented that it would be an amazing thing if Latin could be taught on the curriculum in a school where most of the children were on free school meals and where so many different languages were spoken at home.

A week later, we had a coffee and hatched a plan. I was to design a course that would fit in with key stage two literacy targets, so that Latin could be delivered once a week in a time-tabled literacy lesson for the year 5 group (two classes of thirty children each). Thanks to the kind financial support offered by Cambridge Schools Classics Project, Friends of Classics, the Classical Association and the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, in September 2006 I was ready to start teaching two year five classes at the school, with a course I had spent the summer writing.

As mentioned, the lesson plans were designed to support and enhance the national curriculum literacy strategies, and also to provide an enjoyable, unique and accessible introduction to Latin for large mixed-ability classes. I based them around a series of activities, which included Latin and storytelling using the wonderful myths of Ovid's Metamorphoses. The storytelling aspect was there to give some context to the Latin, promote a broader array of literacy skills and of course to give a taste of the magic that Classics has to offer.

What followed was one of the most enjoyable, exciting, challenging and rewarding experiences of my life. Working with these classes for the year on this course, to bring alive Latin and myth in the hour a week I had with each class, I had to constantly reassess everything I'd ever thought about teaching and about Latin.

HACKNEY CURRICULUM SAMPLES