Available now from Comprehensible Classics: an organizer for student notes and translations to help prepare for the new AP Latin exam! This project began as a attempt to create a translation and notetaking organizer for my new AP Latin class. I wanted something that included more than just blank lines and blank space. Here are …
Author: aolimpi
NEW TIERED READINGS – AP Project Passage #3 (Ovid, Fasti 2.83–86, 95–100, 103–116)
AP Latin Project Passage #3 this year is Ovid's version of "Arion and the Dolphin" from his Fasti poem, a didactic poem about the holidays and festivals of the Roman calendar. Interestingly enough, Pliny the Younger has a famous letter about friendly dolphins near a North African tidepool (Pl. Ep. 9.33) and Aulus Gellius also …
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Letter 2 – Absentiae et Libelli – Video Resources
Below are videos designed to introduce and guide AP Latin students through understanding, reading, and translating Pliny, Epistulae 6.7. Although these videos are aligned to my tiered reader Darkness Over Pompeii, they are useful for any textbook or curriculum. For more AP Latin video resources, check out the AP Resources page. Letter 2 Video: PictureTalk introducing the vocabulary, events, and themes of …
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NEW TIERED READINGS – AP Project Passage #2 (Laudatio Turiae)
AP Project passage #2 is an excerpt from the longest surviving personal Latin inscription, written by a husband (mostly likely Quintus Lucretius Vespillo) for his deceased wife Turia. The inscription dates from the 1st Century B.C., during the tumultuous times of Augustus' rise to power. Given the period of its composition (late Republican Rome) and …
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NEW TIERED READINGS – AP Project Passage #1 (Augustine, Confessions)
July 1st marks the release of one of the major innovations in the new AP Latin syllabus: the inclusion of four annually rotating project passages. Each year AP will post four new project passages (2 prose, 2 poetry). This year's passages include various genres: autobiography (Augustine's Confessions), epigraphy and oration (Laudatio Turiae), myth (Ovid, Fasti), …
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Video Resources for Letter 1B: Calpurnia in Campania, Part 2
Below are videos designed to introduce and guide AP Latin students through understanding, reading, and translating Pliny, Epistulae 6.4.4-5. Although these videos are aligned to my tiered reader Darkness Over Pompeii, they are useful for any textbook or curriculum. For more AP Latin video resources, check out the AP Resources page. Letter 1B Video: PictureTalk introducing …
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New AP Latin Resource: Letter-by-Letter Vocabulary for Pliny
One of the best improvements to the new AP exam is the inclusion of a vocabulary list based on the most frequently occurring vocabulary in the required Vergil and Pliny texts. The complete is located in Appendix B of the AP Latin CED (Curriculum and Exam Description). The reason I love this new list is …
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Just Published: Darkness Over Pompeii
Announcing a new classroom resource for the revised 2025-26 AP Latin Exam! Contents include: Pliny’s love letters to his wife Calpurnia (Epistulae 6.4 and 6.7) The two letters to Tacitus detailing Pliny’s eyewitness account of the infamous eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the death of his uncle Pliny the Elder (Epistulae 6.16 and 6.20) Pliny’s …
Making Pre-Reading Come Alive With “Bilingual Stories”
Recently, I've been experimenting with a new writing activity in my classes—something I’m calling Duae Linguae stories (or “bilingual” stories).. I first hinted at it in a previous post, assuming it was just a concept I’d picked up somewhere—from a blog, a podcast, or conversation.. But after some digging, I realized that I haven’t come …
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Vocabula Conturbemus!
by Andrew Olimpi How do you introduce new vocabulary to your students? Do you have them memorize a list? Discuss a word cloud? Gamify it with Kahoot or Gimkit? Co-create a story? Heading into the third quarter of my twentieth year teaching, I felt like I was running out of tricks. My old pre-reading activities …
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