Last year, I presented to our teaching staff body on metacognition and how to support our students in adopting effective metacognitive practices in their learning. One of the books I read was Jennifer Webb’s ‘Metacognition Handbook’, where she writes about training students to ‘become independent learners with intrinsic motivation’. She gives the example of ‘Amina’, who demonstrated many excellent approaches to her learning: formulating her questions about a new topic ahead of the teaching, asking them in the lesson, writing questions to her teacher in her work about things she had found difficult, and using mnemonic devices to help her remember key vocabulary.

I had an ‘Amina’ a few years back, in my Year 10 Latin class. In September, she told me that she hadn’t really grasped the concept of declensions and how to use them to identify noun endings. I planned a few lessons to address this, and she quickly sorted out this gap in her understanding. Over the course of the GCSE years, and then at A Level, she was tenacious in ensuring that she always understood why she hadn’t quite translated an ’ut’ clause correctly, setting targets for herself, and using programmes such as Quizlet as well as physical flashcards to help her learn vocabulary. She also wrote me notes in her unseen translations so I could understand what she was finding hard, or highlighted a section she’d found challenging.

I’ve been thinking about 6 ‘Amina’ approaches to Latin, which I’ll share with my A Level class as we move into January.

1. Keep expanding your vocabulary, starting with the AS Defined Vocabulary List, and also learning new words from unseen translations and set texts. Create flashcards – either paper ones – or use an application like Quizlet or Carousel.
2. Do all corrections on unseen translations and ensure you know exactly where you went wrong and why x is correct. Keep a note of repeated mistakes and focus on eliminating them in your following translation.
3. Prepare set texts thoroughly, using the commentaries and language resources at your disposal. Avoid shortcuts like Perseus, Google and AI.
4. Learn exactly how the set text fits together and the key contextual, content and literary details. I liked to practise annotating blank texts using one colour for information I could remember myself, and a second for information I looked up in my notes.
5. Practise, practise, practise: unseen translations, extra 15- and 20-mark questions, and scansion. Write the feedback from your last assignment as a target at the top of your next.
6. Learn as much as you can about Roman and Greek culture through podcasts, documentaries, and magazines such as ‘Omnibus’. I had a student for A Level who listened to a Greek mythology podcast to maximise her chances of knowing the myth in the Ovidian passage on the A Level Latin paper.

My ‘Amina’ did exceptionally well at A Level and went off to study French and Spanish at a top university. I’m sure her metacognitive skills have served her well.