No one is suggesting that the Amores are too difficult; they are just much more difficult than last year’s prescription. As for their enjoyability, my students think Ovid is a crazy weirdo; much more enjoyable than Ciciero, but all he does is stalk women; totally non pc; totally uncool.

Hi Stephen.
School groups get in to most sites free, with a letter from the school. My recollection is that there is an entrance fee for Vesuvius (not sure how much, but you could probably find out easily).
Andy

Hi Stephen

You can apply [via your tour agent] for a free student pass; sites vary as to whether they also let teachers in for free, but in my experience you usually have to pay for staff. Mt Vesuvius and Solfatara are privately owned; you can negotiate some discount, but will need to shell out for pupils [staff go free]. Well worth paying for the guided tour at Solfatara.
Paul

Hi Hannah,

Having taught this option all of once, yes, I would recommend teaching Aristophanes first. He really is the bulk of the course, you can do all the necessary background for him and then just update for Menander and Plautus, and to be honest, he was the most successful author for the students.
I really enjoyed this option by the way – great fun , and after ”Culture of Athesn” a little less gruelling!

Fiona

Bit late now, but this is the link:

http://www.theclassicslibrary.com/prescribed%20authors.pdf

List 2 is the one you want. It is somewhat poorly expressed and the IBO recently issued a clarification on their own message boards. These are the texts for examination in May 2013, 2014 and 2015.

Would a lit crit along the same lines as the Gildenhard commentary be preferable?

I agree that it would be both useful and desirable for a modern and up to date scholarly commentary to be available for both set texts, and for OCR to be encouraged to be involved in providing this.
I entirely understand the pragmatic perspective of wanting to limit what the students know on the basis of overly technical / unnecessary information – this is why for instance the Sherwin-White on Pliny, whilst excellent in places, has to be carefully filtered and added to (for IB students).
However I fear that if we simply yield to the OCR-inspired approach of demanding less and less from our students with each new specification, we are complicit in 6th form Latin study which seriously underestimates the capabilites of our students and impoverishes their learning. And perhaps has done so for many years.
As a small example – I no longer test my GCSE Latin students on the current defined vocabulary list. I am fed up of it constantly shrinking with each revision. I test them on a previous one. As well as (with a top set at least) e.g. all tenses of the subjunctive rather than the two that are now required.

couldn’t agree more. Less scope for teaching ideas – and less ”meaty”. pupils not as into it as lsat year’s ovid

I agree, but oh, what a relief from the tedious Cicero! I’m so glad I taught the Cicero first, and so are my students. They hated it despite the rather more interesting final episode and consequently are rather enjoying the Ovid – but it’s tough going. From past experience of complaining about syllabi, the only way is to write to OCR. Bring back some choice, please. After 28 years teaching Latin A Level wherein I managed always to avoid Cicero, this is a real shock to the system.

Oh, so true about the lack of comparability. As you say, even a motivated group flags under the difficulty of the text – and I pray that my students don’t give up after the AS – an all too real possibility. The BCP edition is far too wordy and unattractive to students [and to me!]who are used to text annotated not just with words but also with pictures – and what comparability is there between that edition and the help given by OCR for the Cicero text – which very belatedly now has two editions available?