‘Gamification’ and games have become a popular trend in education, and have thus been given much attention in sessions at education conferences all over the world. But their rather rapid spread has also led to some misunderstandings about what they are and how they can be used in a classroom, largely owing to the wide variety of gamified courses and GBL-based classroom activities that have been popularised by educational media. Rather than serve as a panacea to fix classroom problems, however, gamification and GBL should be considered as just one of many tools, albeit quite powerful ones grounded in cognitive psychology, which can be used to create engaging and dynamic learning environments. After a short introduction to the ideas behind gamification and GBL and the brain science that makes them so powerful, an example of a gamified middle-school level Latin course will be described in detail.

The recent general election has exposed the danger inherent in vote-based democracies – that they inevitably entail large disaffected minorities being excluded from executive power. The ancient Greek inventors of democracy vigorously debated this issue, having painful historical experience of it (recorded by Thucydides) and theoretical solutions (discussed by Aristotle). Yet our state educational system almost completely deprives our secondary-school children of the opportunity to think about democracy afforded by the dazzling thought-world of the ancient Greeks. This is despite the availability of excellent translations of all their writings – free online – into modern English.

This research studies whether different types of motivation have an effect on students' attitudes towards their own ability and success. This is assessed through a comparison of process goals and performance goals within a series of lessons, terms which have been adapted from the research of Dweck & Leggett (1988), amongst others as cited in the literature review. A study of such research has revealed that generally intrinsic motivation as ‘doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable’ is preferable (Ryan & Deci, 2000, p. 55), and that this is encouraged through a focus on the process of an activity rather than an ultimate goal. The main issue here is whether students work more effectively if this goal is not made obvious to them during a lesson. The suggested benefit of focussing on process rather than performance is that students are encouraged to recognise enjoyment in each task, so that they spend time and effort improving their skills. In contrast a performance focus increases the chances of choosing an easy task or rushing through a piece of work in order to obtain the results expected (Dweck, 1999). Furthermore performance feedback seems more summative and less helpful for future work (Corpus & Lepper, 2007); comments such as “Well done you did it !” provide nothing useful, while process feedback reflects upon skills which can be applied repeatedly.

For the past several decades, education researchers have devoted a lot of time, energy, and practice to gaining an understanding of literacy and the cognitive processes that control it. This research has developed, evidence has converged around certain findings, and teaching methods for reading and literacy have changed for the better because of it. Unfortunately the information and research, by and large, has not trickled out of the realm of reading education. Nevertheless, there is a great deal that teachers of Classical languages can learn and gain from an understanding of the ideas that have evolved from this research. After all, reading is a key component to any Latin or Greek classroom, regardless of whether the teacher espouses a reading method, a traditional grammar-translation method, or an approach that focuses more on productive proficiency. By using the products of the past years of literacy research, Latin and Greek teachers can perform better as educators, since they will have a stronger construct for how reading works as a cognitive process and they will be more able to provide students with help and support by isolating problem skills and developing activities specifically to remedy those issues.

While I was undertaking teacher training I noticed an emphasis on student-led learning and experimented with trying to make my own lessons less teacher-centred. Many other lessons in the school in which I was placed were largely student-led, as the students had easy access to resources that made this possible, such as iPads. As the school uses the Cambridge Latin Course (CLC), I decided to experiment with its accompanying Independent Learning Manual (ILM), which is designed to be used in conjunction with the CLC textbooks.

During my PGCE I had a class of eight students in Year 11 studying for the OCR GCSE in Latin who had to master knowledge of 475 words for their exams. Their recent unseen translations demonstrated weak performances due to poor vocabulary knowledge. On interviewing the students, most lacked a systematic approach to learning vocabulary. Since the end-goal of studying Latin today is more often the reading of ancient texts, the requirements for vocabulary learning differs from that of other languages. Composing sentences in Latin is an increasingly rare skill too. Thus by rarely needing to produce Latin, students have no means of actively practising the language. Whilst students often find learning vocabulary arduous, I found that with Latin students find it particularly difficult to retain knowledge. In the school the GCSE Latin lessons are teacher-led and mostly involve the dissemination of information for the students to record and process. The pressure of covering the exam syllabus and difficulty of integrating vocabulary activities into this class led me to the possible solution presented by Memrise.

One ‘can hardly avoid controversy’ when discussing prose composition (Pearcy, 1998, 35); the very idea seems to evoke only the extremes from a Classicist. Some avidly argue against it, labelling it a ‘useless, archaic exercise’ (Ball and Ellsworth, 1992, p. 55), some vehemently defend it, calling it ‘an invaluable virtue in all areas of education’ (Butterfield, 2013, p. 8). Others believe there are more important arguments to be made about Classics, comparing the argument about prose composition to ‘litigating over property lines when the house is on fire’ (Jacoby, 1994, xii, cited in Pearcy, 1998, p. 37). Despite this view, the debate about prose composition has recently been reignited. The recent publication in Politeia (Butterfield, Anderson, Radice & Sullivan, 2013) demanded a new prose composition option for Latin GCSE in order to bring it in line with the current A Level system and for students to ‘obtain a higher level of linguistics familiarity and facility in Latin’ (2013, p. 8). The DfE (2014) has just published the guidelines to the reformed Latin GCSE, for first teaching in 2016, which does include recommendations for such an option.

Last autumn, Hereford Cathedral School began an after-school Greek Club open to state-school pupils from across Hereford. This article aims to provide some ideas about what works and how best to foster interest in Greek and Greek culture.

‘That's amazing! I can see what he's doing.’ These words, from a thirteen-year old boy in London, were extremely encouraging. Moments earlier he had been complaining that our imminent ancient history session would stop him playing pool. At his words, his friends looked up from online gaming, and they too began taking an interest in images of ancient vases and learning about ancient warfare. An hour later they hit the pool tables, but for the duration of our after-school session, these reluctant learners had engaged well and taken real pleasure in finding out about the ancient world.

A second-order change took place in Latin Teaching in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s, with effects reaching into the present day. This Change was a shift in attitude, values and methods which Forrest describes as, ‘curriculum change on an unprecedented scale’ (Forrest, 1996, p. 42) and the ‘transformation of Latin teaching’ (ibid, p. 146). This article explores the nature of this change and justifies categorising it as second-order. Secondly, it considers the process of how the change took place, looking also at changes within the wider social field and resistance to change within Latin teaching. Both a Bourdieusian theoretical framework and a metaphorical application of chaos and complexity theory are used to analyse this change and explain some of the conflicts and crises within and around the change period. The final section of the analysis considers issues affecting the communication of ideas and the effect of social capital within the system.

In November 2014 the Reading University Classics Department held an unusual event as part of the national ‘Being Human’ humanities festival. We re-created an ancient schoolroom and invited more than a hundred local school-age students to experience antiquity at first hand (specifically, Greek-speaking Egypt in the fourth century AD, as that is the time and place for which we have the most information). Before entering the schoolroom participants donned a complete Roman school costume, removing watches, glasses, and any other visibly modern accoutrements, and learned how to play the part which they would assume once inside. Students learned how to act like an ancient child (a relatively simple process), while the classroom slaves (headed by a distinguished Oxford papyrologist) and the teachers (a superb team of three lecturers and seven undergraduate and MA students from Reading) underwent a longer training to enable them to teach in the ancient fashion.

“There is a shortage of certified Latin teachers: Please spread the word!” This plea is the title of a recent article in Amphora, a publication of the Society for Classical Studies (Ancona & Durkin, 2015). Here the authors cite government statistics, reports from the placement service of the American Classical League, and personal experience to demonstrate that the demand for Latin teachers – whether or not certified – outstrips the supply. As they point out, this lack of teachers at the pre-collegiate level does not bode well for the health of our discipline.

2014 was a particularly big year for Minimus. The DfE ruling that primary schools must teach a language which need not be a modern language (Latin and Classical Greek were among the options) has led to a pleasing increase in demand for Minimus.

In France, recent curriculum reforms have signalled the cull of Latin and Greek from the secondary school curriculum – a teacher who criticised the reforms was censured; his blog disappeared. Belgium – because of the strength of its Catholic education long a beacon for Classical education – is witnessing schools dropping ancient languages in favour of STEM subjects at an alarming rate, driven similarly by the government agenda. As I am writing this article, I notice an online piece on the deteriorating situation in Malta, too. Throughout Europe, the financial crisis is spurring on governments and schools to intensify their push for STEM subjects – hailed as an instant fix for the faltering global economy – while vilifying less immediately practical subjects. A conversation with a French colleague who was lamenting the oppressing regime made me realise how well the UK is doing in comparison with other countries in Europe. Numbers of (state) secondary schools offering Latin are increasing, and thanks to the Department for Education, primary schools can offer Latin and Greek at Key Stage 2. Of course we should not delude ourselves: the number of secondary schools offering Latin is still low, the teaching of Greek is particularly disheartening, and only about 2% of all primary schools so far have opted to teach Latin and none (to my knowledge) have chosen Greek. Nevertheless, in comparison to the rest of Europe, a government which (whatever else one may think of it) supports the teaching of Classical languages, a growing number of hubs which see all levels of education collaborating creatively, and flourishing outreach organisations which offer financial and logistical support, give the UK at least some cause for optimism.

It has been another very busy year so far at the East Oxford Community Classics Centre at Cheney School. In September, two exciting new courses started: a brand new community A Level Latin course and a Classics enrichment course for Year 9s at Cheney School. We have also been running a range of projects and events. This report details some of what we have been up to, and some of the exciting things we have planned for the future.

At a time when the Classics offerings across the country are forced to dwindle, when many schools are unable to offer Greek or even Latin, one school has bucked the trend by offering a classical language new to the UK curriculum. Since their foundation 40 years ago, St James' Independent Schools have pioneered the teaching of Sanskrit in a Western environment. Sanskrit has been developed as an academic subject with resources that take complete beginners to IGCSE and beyond to AS and A level.

Development of the machine translator Blitz Latin between the years 2002 and 2015 is discussed. Key issues remain the ambiguity in meaning of Latin stems and inflections, and the word order of the Latin language. Attempts to improve machine translation of Latin are described by the programmer.

Apromenade lesson is when the learners get up and source, identify and evaluate information from materials attached to the walls of the classroom or a corridor or some other space in the school. The students have to walk around the ‘exhibits’ to find out something and note it down as they go. This activity can forms a part of a sequence of tasks in a lesson. It works well for any subject matter which is highly visual, such as images taken from Pompeian wall-paintings, for example, or even for enlarged text selections.