‘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.

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.

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.

‘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.

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.

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.

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.