Prep Latin

Latin is the basis of Romance languages including Italian, French and Spanish. A selection of children in Years 6 to 8 study Latin at St Michael’s Prep School.

We follow the Cambridge Latin Course and offer Latin as a fully interactive experience with lots of online resources to support vocabulary learning and grammar acquisition. Starting in Year 6, our studies follow a family who lived in Pompeii. We look at the Roman household, domestic arrangements and daily routines, the business of the forum and the theatre.

Year 7 pupils learn about Roman slavery, food, beliefs about death and the afterlife, gladiators and schooling. At this stage, the children are able to manage quite complex grammatical structures, changes in verbal tense, some subordinate clauses and comparisons of adverbs and adjectives.

In Year 8 we begin Book Two of the Cambridge Latin Course which introduces pupils to Gaius Salvius Liberalis. Year 8 children learn complex grammar such as indirect questions, temporal clauses, indirect statement and some subjunctives.