Lingua Angelica

[Kristi B]

I purchased Lingua Angelica I to use with my son next year when he is in First Form Latin. Now I'm looking it over and I have many questions.

1. Is this only while studying First Form? I see that some of the songs have grammatical forms introduced in Second and Third Form Latin.

2. If not, could my daughter use this alongside Second Form?

3. How do you schedule it? Ever so often? Continuously? After a certain grammar point is introduced? In the summer?

4. Is there a Lingua Angelica II? Will there be?

[CarrieAnne]

We struggle to use this program faithfully, but when it’s working for us we sing or listen to the song once/day during Latin. On Fridays after quizzes are over we do some of the suggested steps for digging deeper. Your students could most likely go through it together. The suggested order of songs goes past First Form, but any given song will have some grammatical structures more familiar and others less so.

[Bonnie]

Carrie gave you good advice, and I am sure you will get other helpful suggestions. Very likely the consensus would be that there is no one right way to use LA. I suspect that Cheryl Lowe's main goal for Lingua Angelica was to expose the student to the rich profound beauty of the Latin language and for the student to take away a love for beautiful sacred music and the ideas as expressed in Latin. The hymns do not tie to a particular grammar lesson, and it does not pay to bog down on grammar concepts not studied yet.

It may be a consolation to know that some of the selections are studied in Henle II (Adeste Fideles, Tantum Ergo, and the Benedictus); the Dies Irae in Henle IV; and the Pater Noster and Ave Maria in Henle I, so, if any vocabulary or syntax seem relatively advanced for young students, you may have another crack at them later.

Bonnie

[momgineer]

Carrie gave you good advice, and I am sure you will get other helpful suggestions. Very likely the consensus would be that there is no one right way to use LA. I suspect that Cheryl Lowe's main goal for Lingua Angelica was to expose the student to the rich profound beauty of the Latin language and for the student to take away a love for beautiful sacred music and the ideas as expressed in Latin. The hymns do not tie to a particular grammar lesson, and it does not pay to bog down on grammar concepts not studied yet.

It may be a consolation to know that some of the selections are studied in Henle II (Adeste Fideles, Tantum Ergo, and the Benedictus); the Dies Irae in Henle IV; and the Pater Noster and Ave Maria in Henle I, so, if any vocabulary or syntax seem relatively advanced for young students, you may have another crack at them later.

Bonnie

Does the new Henle 2 course cover these? The Henle material I have used from MP always skipped the Christian sections. It was always hard for me to know how much extra stuff not in the lesson plans to add.

[Bonnie]

Yes, the Benedictus is assigned, with explanatory notes, as part of Lesson 13, and Adeste Fideles and Tantum Ergo are covered with explanatory notes for the Christian Latin section in the middle of the book. There are suggestions as to how to incorporate the Christian Latin selections during the school year, but this is flexible.

Bonnie

[enbateau]

I'm pretty sure there are sample lesson plans for how to go through it in each of the TM's for FFL, SFL and TFL at the front. We tried to keep it up during FFL, but there were just so many endings and so much vocabulary we didn't yet know. I think we got halfway through the FFL plans for it. We haven't picked it up in SFL, but I have plans to get to it someday. It was a really sweet time teaching my eldest songs from the sheet music. My mom even played piano for us a few times. Maybe this summer we'll get back to it? We sang the song a few times, looked at the vocab/parsing for what we knew and copied the rest.

Have you seen the set for LA II?

[Heather in GA]

We tried to use it last year following the FFL plans, but I found it hard to implement considering we knew so little. I decided to put the CD in our van a few months ago, and we all enjoy listening to it and singing along. I imagine we'll pull out the books to understand it all better in the future, but for now we're benefitting so much just from listening to it regularly. My 9 and 11-year-old daughters actually sang the Dona Nobis Pacem at my father's Annointing of the Sick last week. Our priest asked where they had learned it, and the girls replied, "Oh, we have a CD of Latin hymns we listen to in the car."

[tanya]

Hello.

Nice discussion here. I'll add what we do at HLS.

1, 2, 4) We put a syllabus in each of the Forms teacher manuals for Lingua Angelica. There is a LAII, but people rarely get to it.

3) Implementing LA is difficult due to time restrictions, but we tell teachers to try to get to it each Friday after the quiz. They struggle with this because they also like to introduce the vocabulary for the coming week so students have time to start memorizing it over the weekend and on Monday (when they do school at home). By Third Form Latin, no one is getting to LA. There just isn't time because TFL is such a beast.

But when we find the time for LA, our goal is for FFL students to only complete the Vocabulary Drill and the interlinear translation. There is very little we can parse at this point. Then, the following year, we go back through the prayers/ songs we attempted in FFL and parse what we know from our studies in SFL. We put the stanza or prayer on the board in Latin when we are teaching it, have the students attempt to translate based on their knowledge, and just talk about it - even if they don't know the vocabulary word, a lot of times they can recognize the ending.

The goals of LA are two-fold: 1) a little taste on the students' level of what translation looks like 2) a knowledge of what they are actually singing in choir or praying in class so that they understand and have a better experience with the song or prayer.

LA should be a little break from the Forms and an enjoyable experience for the students.

Tanya

[Emily L]

We do religion of some type every day, but I have struggled with finding catechism materials I really enjoy. I decided to slot this LA program into "religion" instead of Latin. My son listens to the song and does the translation, and then does the parsing with the teacher manual open. It's partly copying, partly parsing, partly learning MP's system since he is not using MP Latin. He's really enjoying it. We're only doing one page per week. The cd is beautiful.

[Kristi B]

I'm pretty sure there are sample lesson plans for how to go through it in each of the TM's for FFL, SFL and TFL at the front. We tried to keep it up during FFL, but there were just so many endings and so much vocabulary we didn't yet know. I think we got halfway through the FFL plans for it. We haven't picked it up in SFL, but I have plans to get to it someday. It was a really sweet time teaching my eldest songs from the sheet music. My mom even played piano for us a few times. Maybe this summer we'll get back to it? We sang the song a few times, looked at the vocab/parsing for what we knew and copied the rest.

Have you seen the set for LA II?

I had not seen that! So good to know it is out there. Thank you!!

[Kristi B]

Hello.

Nice discussion here. I'll add what we do at HLS.

1, 2, 4) We put a syllabus in each of the Forms teacher manuals for Lingua Angelica. There is a LAII, but people rarely get to it.

3) Implementing LA is difficult due to time restrictions, but we tell teachers to try to get to it each Friday after the quiz. They struggle with this because they also like to introduce the vocabulary for the coming week so students have time to start memorizing it over the weekend and on Monday (when they do school at home). By Third Form Latin, no one is getting to LA. There just isn't time because TFL is such a beast.

But when we find the time for LA, our goal is for FFL students to only complete the Vocabulary Drill and the interlinear translation. There is very little we can parse at this point. Then, the following year, we go back through the prayers/ songs we attempted in FFL and parse what we know from our studies in SFL. We put the stanza or prayer on the board in Latin when we are teaching it, have the students attempt to translate based on their knowledge, and just talk about it - even if they don't know the vocabulary word, a lot of times they can recognize the ending.

The goals of LA are two-fold: 1) a little taste on the students' level of what translation looks like 2) a knowledge of what they are actually singing in choir or praying in class so that they understand and have a better experience with the song or prayer.

LA should be a little break from the Forms and an enjoyable experience for the students.

Tanya

Tanya, THANK YOU! I've obviously never read that part of the Teacher manuals for First or Second Form!! I'm excited to use this. We treat Latin like math - we just keep on doing it, take breaks when life calls for them, and then pick it up again all year round so they don't forget everything on break. My eighth grade daughter is about 1/3 of the way through Second Form, but trying to move faster, and my fourth grade son will finish Latina Christiana this spring. I will probably have him start First Form in mid-July. He seems to be really taking to it, and he loves singing, so I got LA as part of his curriculum, but now I'm thinking to just go through it for my daughter as well.

[Kristi B]

So I'm now looking at the plans in the Forms Teacher Guides and I'm excited to introduce my children to these songs! My daughter is halfway through Second Form right now, and my son will begin First Form in the fall, for fifth grade. What would be the best way to do this? I'm thinking of just having both of them start at the beginning with the First Form songs, but I may have my daughter focus a bit more on the parsing and translation. Then we can do them together and it will also serve as a review for her. What do you think?

[enbateau]

Start at the FFL songs if you want. They're all great.