ARCHIVED—Recipient Bios
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Year: 1997 – Province: Ontario
Certificate of Excellence Recipients
Patricia Bell
The popularity of Patricia Bell's Latin class among the students at Centennial Collegiate Vocational Institute in Guelph is the best evidence of her ability to provide a stimulating learning environment. Based on the premise that students learn better when they interact with course material, Ms. Bell and her students pioneered a learning method that focusses on language comprehension (as opposed to word-for-word translation). Students create cartoon illustrations for the stories in the Latin textbook, and a collection of the acetate drawings and student worksheets from the Pictogram Approach, as Ms. Bell calls it, was recently published. In the same spirit, she encourages dramatizations and other activities that highlight the relevance of Latin today as an aspect of social and cultural studies. A sign on her classroom wall reads "Latin is more than a language." The effects of her efforts pervade the school, as her students choose classical themes for French class presentations, English creative writing, artwork and architectural drafting.