The Bayeux Tapestry

    Reading the Bayeux tapestry with Latin III students is a real treat - an important historical document that students can actually read in the original Latin.  It's full of purpose and result clauses and has a lot of vocabulary in common with Caesar.  There are many websites about the Bayeux tapestry, many that break it down panel by panel as well as an ingenious Youtube video that animated the panels into a short movie.  See below:

  Once you have read the tapestry with your students,  a terrific project is to ask students to create their own "tapestry" based upon a historical event.  This is easily and hilariously accomplished with the "historic tale construction kit"  which allows students to create their own Bayeux Tapestry cartoons.  Click on the link and you will see what I mean.  Students have written about the World Series, the death of Michael Jackson and many other "historical" events of rather dubious importance using this tool.  I use this exercise have students practice writing subjunctive clauses, particularly purpose and result clauses.  The historic tale construction kit has been modified from it's original form.  I found the old site was full of glitches and though it supposedly allowed for students to save their creations,  we were never able to do so.  
An enterprising student discovered that if she moved her creation to either  PowerPoint or Microsoft paint that she could pretty easily save her cartoons.  Soon the rest of the class was doing that as well.  I haven't used this new version of the historic tale creation but it's definitely worth trying. 
    The rubric that I wrote to guide students to create their historical cartoons is in the folder on the drive "Stuff for Advanced Students." 

http://bayeux.datensalat.net/