An Introduction...

Movie talks are a relatively new addition to my repertoire and they are amazing.  This activity was created by Dr. Ashley Hastings and has been blogged about my many language teachers.  Basically, you find a short movie 2-5 minutes long, tell the plot of the movie in Latin either before/ during or after showing the actual movie.  As a Latin teacher, the trickiest part is to find clips that target the kind of vocabulary that I want to review and doesn't have too many modern words outside of the traditional Latin lexicon.  Thankfully,  I have found many such films.  My students are convinced that I am some kind of "weird movie whisperer" because I discovered most of these  when I was wasting time on YouTube or scrolling through my Facebook feed.
But Latin isn't a spoken language...
Yeah, I know, but it doesn't matter. Here's why - students acquire words (move them into their long term memory) by hearing, seeing or reading them repeatedly.  Reading is great but it's slow. If I orally tell a story, I can review many more words much more quickly than if I ask students to read the same story. My goal in using this exercise is to help them to retain words we either already learned but haven't reviewed recently and introduce some new vocabulary that I want them to retain. 
But I don't speak Latin fluently/ well/ at all...  
Take a deep breath and trust me.  If I can do this - you can.  If you see me at a language convention,  I will NOT be among the groups conversing easily in Latin.  Speaking Latin does not come easily to me but through practice I have gotten the hang of telling these short stories in Latin. You can too and your students will be the better for it. They will not judge your pronunciation, comment on mistakes on noun-adjective agreement, word order etc.  It is important in the beginning to write out your "script." The more you do this, the less time it will take and the more confident you will become.
I'm not sure they will listen....
I wasn't either when I started. I have a tough audience. My students are squirmy, chatty, and reminders/ threats about how lack of attention results in poor grades do little (if anything)  to elicit their attention. I have found that the secret to holding their attention is to describe/ show really compelling movies.  (not much of a secret really).  The movies listed on this blog have engaged multiple classes at various times of the day. The technique described in the following blog  holds them accountable for their listening in an enjoyable way and provides feed back to the teacher regarding understanding.  See the blog "The Method" on this tab for more details.