New First Steps in Latin

New First Steps in Latin is the first book in a three-book series designed specifically for middle or high school students. The texts employ a minimum of explanation of grammatical principles, concentrate on essential grammar and morphology and on the syntax of simple, compound, and complex sentences. The focus on learning is through numerous examples. The series offers students a complete graded introduction to Latin and grammar. It can be used alone, as a main text supplemented by readings and cultural material, or as a supplementary grammatical work text for a reading-oriented course.

Each book consists of 30 lessons intended for a year-long course in Latin. Taken together, the three books form a complete course for grades 7–9 or 6-8. Vocabulary in the series is based on Cicero, Vergil, Ovid, and Pliny. After completing New Steps in Latin, students will be ready to read these or other unaltered Latin authors.

• New First Steps (grade 6 or 7): conjugations 1-4, active and passive voice; declensions 1-5; simple sentences.
• New Second Steps (grade 7 or 8):participles, infinitives, relative clauses, indirect statement; complex sentences; connected reading.
• New Third Steps (grade 8 or 9):uses of the subjunctive, gerund and gerundive; excerpts from Caesar, Bellum Gallicum.

The authors of this series are part of a group of instructors at The Episcopal Academy in Merion, Pennsylvania, who worked on this project initiated by Lee Pearcy (pHd Bryn Mawr) who has been chair of Classics. He is the author of numerous articles, book reviews, textbooks, and scholarly studies. The team consists of Mary Allen, Thomas Kent, Michael Klaassen, Mary Van Dyke Konopka, and Alexander Pearson who together prepared this successor to Francis Ritchie’s classic 19th-century texts, First, Second and Third Steps in Latin.