Untextbooking for the CI Latin class: why and how to begin

Abstract

When I first dreamed about leaving my textbook behind in any serious manner, the thought was spurred by a post authored by Audrey Watters in her blog Hack Education, ‘Hacking the Textbook (Open).’ In her post, Watters describes an event in which teachers are trained to create, cultivate, and collectively share their own curriculum content. I had already spent years modifying my textbook to make it work with the way I teach, and while I still believe that it is the best textbook for a Comprehensible Input-based class, I found myself struggling more and more against the book the further students progressed just to maintain a semblance of comprehensibility. Whether or not the text was compelling—another pillar of Comprehensible Input—was not even a concern at that point.