Innovation in Teaching and Learning for the Greek I, II, and III Classes

This year in the Greek class we have explored new ways of learning the language, in addition to the methods that are typically used, such as recognition of morphological patterns. Learning Greek involves high levels of memorization and understanding. To make memorization fun for students, we implemented new methods to help students remember and apply their knowledge. Some of these methods include interactive activities, while others involve solving memory puzzles. The interactive activities took on many forms. There were stations, relays, online quiz games, and more. For pure memorization, we put the students in motion, they walked and memorized the verb endings needed for basic Greek morphology. For one of the memory exercises, students were asked to stand, rather than sit, while they read the material from the board. The students then turned around and had to recite the material they had just read without looking. This process was repeated until the material had been memorized. The combination of these methods helped students remember the things they learned and memorized. One struggle that arose with some of these methods was that memorization does not equal understanding. We had to invent new methods to connect what students memorized to what they needed to understand. To measure our success, we have looked at the grades of the students who were given the opportunity to use the methods mentioned above. Our class of 17 students all passed the first semester of Greek, 13 of which passed with an A, one student earned a B and three students earned a C. These results show us that, while there is variation in students and their abilities, much of the class excelled under these learning methods.