Below are some of the accounts of the student-teachers who have been running the course in the schools on the challenges they've faced, their favourite moments, and their thoughts on the project:

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"It is going really well I think. They respond really well to activity-based learning, and to any kind of game. They particularly seem to enjoy chanting the numbers, which generally becomes an hysterical crescendo... One particular difficulty (or semi-difficulty, as it is not posing too great a problem) is a quickening disparity between the abilities presenting themselves in the class. Some children grasp grammatical concepts really quickly, and have a lot of initiative in terms of formulating sentences beyond what has been set them to do, for example. They also retain vocabulary particularly well. Other children are needing to go through time and again what we have done in previous classes when it crops up again. "Miss, Miss, what's an object?" However, they all seem to get something out of every class - even if it is just understanding what an adjective is, or why a 'decade' is called a decade'. I have generally followed the lesson plan I was given, often chopping and changing the order a little, and adding different games and activities. More or less, however, this has been a really good guide."
Liesl Nunns, East Oxford First School.

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"'Over all for me the first term has been a big success. I have had fantastic support from the teachers of both my classes and the children have all been incredibly enthusiastic. I think the initial challenge in introducing Latin to the students was not necessarily the language itself, but the preconception that learning such an old language would be difficult. This is not helped by the lack of a proper knowledge of basic grammatical points in the English language (I might add that this is due to the limitations of the curriculum in our schools rather than any fault of the school itself or its teachers). However, this term has allowed the children to become familiar with this basic grammar whilst they learn the language and this has also helped them to see that learning Latin is not so tricky as it at first appeared. I have found that the children have been increasingly keen to get involved with the language element of the course - surprisingly more so than with the myths! I have also found that students who speak English as a second language (perhaps unsurprisingly in this instance) have shown remarkable aptitude for Latin and, whereas at the beginning of the term they were quite shy, they have certainly gained confidence in their abilities. All of the children have proved to have an excellent memory and are able to learn to conjugate verbs far quicker than I could learning Latin as an adult.
So far teaching has for me been a very positive experience. I have had only one negative comment, 'what relevance does Latin have in the modern world?', which has been answered by the fact that the teachers have noticed that the children's grammar has greatly improved since the beginning of term and that my students are still very enthusiastic and engaging with the subject. I am certainly looking forward to continuing with my classes next term and I'm quite sure that the children are too!'
Sara Waymont. Gayhurst primary school, Hackney.

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"It was great! I started by giving them a speech about how useful Latin would be, and then gave them a worksheet with some Latin words, Italian translations (they've been learning Italian) and English derivatives, to see if they could work out the meaning of the Latin word, and in both classes they managed to do it without too much help (even "terra", which I thought would cause difficulty.) Then I explained the concept of noun declension, and taught them the basic function of nominatives and accusatives using 1st declension nouns, and they all seemed to understand and answered correctly when I tried "trick" questions like asking them to translate "puella vocat ancillam", and then "ancillam vocat puella". In the second half of the lesson, I told them about the Metamorphoses and myths about transformation, read them the story of Arachne, and then asked them to tell me some genres that transformation stories could be written in. These included "scary", "romantic", "happy", "shocking", etc. Then I gave each table a genre (in the first class I made the mistake of allowing the children to pick, which led to much complaining along the lines of "Miss, only one boy at our table wants to do scary, we want to do funny..." "Miss, can I be on that table instead?", etc. so in the second I was mean and assigned them genres whether they liked it or not), and asked them to start working comunally on a short transformation story in that genre, which they will read out next week in class. I gave them a list of some of the more important gods and goddesses to use in their stories if they wanted to. The children were all friendly and well-behaved, and one little boy (followed by his friend) even asked me for homework!"
Rose Elliot, St Josephs primary school.

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"Teaching Latin this term has been very exciting. Coming into contact with the children in Year 5 at Woodberry has been fascinating and, I think, a positive and eye-opening experience for me and for the children! I have really enjoyed the challenge of engaging them with a subject I am interested in and I have also learnt a lot about the difficulties they and their teachers face on a day-to-day basis.
The children I was working with were eager to learn and full of
energy, but some of them lacked very basic skills necessary for
learning such as being able to sit still and the ability to remain
fairly calm and focused for short periods of time. While I cannot
claim to have helped them in this respect, I am convinced that, over time, contact with role models from a university environment where such skills are taken for granted is no bad thing. The class teacher and classroom assistant were both supportive, and I learnt a lot from their experience of working in the school and especially from the classroom assistant who had an amazing talent for maintaining control under trying conditions. Of course, they both had to suffer my lack of experience at teaching in a primary school, but, in spite of this, the class teacher told me she was happy to have some fresh input into the classroom.
Some of the children were very quick to pick up Latin, perhaps because they are already bi- or tri- lingual. There were also some students who I think found Latin too difficult, but they were nevertheless able to understand the grammatical concepts we were working with (e.g. identifying a noun, verb, adjective; understanding the idea of subject and object). It would be great to have the opportunity to follow up this progress further – I hope that the classes will continue!
My favourite moments from this term have been when a student asked me if I speak Latin at home (which I found hilarious), and when another student brought in some Latin flashcards that she got at the British Museum. I also thought it was very touching and occasionally amusing to see the students' faces when they worked out the answer to a difficult question or put things we had been working on over two or three lessons together in their heads."
James Cross, Woodberry school.

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"I've found teaching to be an eye opening experience in regards to my future career plans. Before teaching I was looking into a career in Investment Banking (shallow!) and now I am interested in teaching once I've graduated. The hardest moment would be when I set them the worksheet to do, making sentences, and they all stared at me blankly, yet with encouragement they suceeded. One of the best moments was when a boy, with learning problems, came to write his sentence on the board and was so proud of himself. Since then he has been engaging in my lessons far more. They got far too excited during latin snap, almost causing riots, yet was good to see them enjoying it."
Alexandra Stuart-Hutcheson, St Scholasticas school.

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"So far, I have found the experience of teaching very exhilerating, fascinating and sometimes quite terrifying. I have enjoyed it a good deal more than I expected, and also have found it to be often emotionally difficult and taxing. For me, there is a great deal of responsibility and angst involved but the feeling I get when I think a lesson has gone well is incredibly satisfying and pleasurable. I hope very much that the children enjoy and are benefiting from our lessons, I would like to think they do. In terms of practicalities, I have mainly stuck to the lesson plans although I have not been able to fit everything into each lesson. I love doing the teaching, and I think the project is important and necessary for our education system. It is an incredibly rewarding thing to do and I feel very honoured to be part of it."
Katherine Rose, Nightingale Primary School.