During high school, I was very active in my chapter of the National Junior Classical League. Aside from attending the weekly wednesday meetings and holding the office of Junior Consul (Vice President), I competed in several categories at annual Area, State, and National Competition.
My main category was Dramatic Interpretation (DI). DI involves memorizing a passage in Latin and then acting it out for a panel of judges (1-5 at any instance). Judging was based on accuracy of memorization, pronunciation, creativity, and others. My memory is fuzzy but I think that my C.V. includes medals at every level: Area (4 gold), State (3 gold, 1 silver), Nationals (1 gold, 1 silver).
The main point of this post, however, is that I also competed in the Roman Life category. While DI is a performance-based category, Roman Life involved extracurricular research and study and then taking a test at each level of competition. I grew to love studying about the daily lives of the Romans and still remember quite a bit. I'll take a little time to talk about meals of the Romans (or at least as much as I can from memory). I was inspired by the lecture on Roman meals/education/games we had earlier in the quarter.
Romans had three meals: ientaculum (breakfast), prandium (lunch), and cena (dinner). Ientaculum consisted of light options such as grapes, cheese, olives, and some bread. Lunch was very similar in that it was a light meal, usually eaten on the run by busy Roman men. Hungry Romans could stop by a street vendor who sold cold meats, nuts, bread, and cheese. Cena was the large meal of the Romans. It involved, for those who could afford it, hosting guests and usually lasted several hours. Eating during Cena was a social event and the Romans, when they hosted guests, would often eat to excess resulting in purges of each round of food. Some of the delicacies included peacock and a fish paste called garum. Slaves prepared and delivered the food to the sedentary romans who laid on their left arms while they ate. Slaves did not clear the tables in between Cena courses. Instead, they removed the entire table top and brought out the replacement table top already set with the next course of food on top. The term for this was secundus mesa or second table, naturally. So when the Romans had seconds, they literally had second's.
More about education and other Roman Life topics to come as well as an update on PBL 2...
Sunday, November 23, 2008
PBL 1 Summary
My team's first assignment is complete and we are making great progress on our second assignment, revolving around Pompeii.
I am very pleased with the interaction, communication, and production of our team during the first PBL assignment. All of us got along very well and our varying personality types filled different roles throughout the project.
Since I am the oldest, most senior member (it is kind of depressing saying that!), I found myself being the source for focus and direction as our project developed. I am a naturally engaging, extroverted person and I brought that kind of energy to the group as we were getting to know one another. Once we all warmed up, we have since become friends.
The first obstacle that was tackled was delegating research and doing the leg work. Tyler, Rachel, and Justin all have great researching capabilities and have a work ethic to bring to the table. This made information gathering the easiest part of the project.
The more difficult task was to take our plentiful information and then transform and combine our resources into a succinct and effective presentation that fit the parameters of the prompt. This is the area that our group sort of struggled with and grew throughout the assignment. We are all capable, intelligent researches but expanding and utilizing our creativity is a task that isn't exercised enough. We brainstormed extensively and decided that creating a story and acting as characters from the past would be entertaining and understandable for the target market (school-aged students).
We met out of class at least once a week and never fell behind on tasks and self-imposed due dates. Being able to delegate tasks like that made this group work very easy compared to other experiences I've had. Most of the time in group projects, one person has to take complete control due to the lack of initiative by the other groups members. This was not a problem for our team. Rachel was kind enough to let us use her house to prepare our edible road and practice our presentation multiple times.
I feel that, as a group, we demonstrated high marks in information gathering, accountability, and accuracy. There were definite areas of improvement though. The actual presentation itself should have been formatted more like the "Jeopardy" group. That group created a lesson-plan that could be picked up and placed in any class room and still be viable. If we could have followed that model, I think our presentation would have been more effective. Also, during the actual presentation, every group member abandoned what we practiced for so long: being succinct and precise. Our running time was about 40 minutes when it should have been only 20. I'm not sure why there was such a schism between our practices and our actual presentation, but I'm sure that nerves and a lack of experience in public presentations played into it. These are two areas that must be improved for our second assignment.
I am very pleased with the interaction, communication, and production of our team during the first PBL assignment. All of us got along very well and our varying personality types filled different roles throughout the project.
Since I am the oldest, most senior member (it is kind of depressing saying that!), I found myself being the source for focus and direction as our project developed. I am a naturally engaging, extroverted person and I brought that kind of energy to the group as we were getting to know one another. Once we all warmed up, we have since become friends.
The first obstacle that was tackled was delegating research and doing the leg work. Tyler, Rachel, and Justin all have great researching capabilities and have a work ethic to bring to the table. This made information gathering the easiest part of the project.
The more difficult task was to take our plentiful information and then transform and combine our resources into a succinct and effective presentation that fit the parameters of the prompt. This is the area that our group sort of struggled with and grew throughout the assignment. We are all capable, intelligent researches but expanding and utilizing our creativity is a task that isn't exercised enough. We brainstormed extensively and decided that creating a story and acting as characters from the past would be entertaining and understandable for the target market (school-aged students).
We met out of class at least once a week and never fell behind on tasks and self-imposed due dates. Being able to delegate tasks like that made this group work very easy compared to other experiences I've had. Most of the time in group projects, one person has to take complete control due to the lack of initiative by the other groups members. This was not a problem for our team. Rachel was kind enough to let us use her house to prepare our edible road and practice our presentation multiple times.
I feel that, as a group, we demonstrated high marks in information gathering, accountability, and accuracy. There were definite areas of improvement though. The actual presentation itself should have been formatted more like the "Jeopardy" group. That group created a lesson-plan that could be picked up and placed in any class room and still be viable. If we could have followed that model, I think our presentation would have been more effective. Also, during the actual presentation, every group member abandoned what we practiced for so long: being succinct and precise. Our running time was about 40 minutes when it should have been only 20. I'm not sure why there was such a schism between our practices and our actual presentation, but I'm sure that nerves and a lack of experience in public presentations played into it. These are two areas that must be improved for our second assignment.
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