Free Essays on Gladitorial Combat

Evaluate the importance of Gladiatorial combat to public entertainment to Roman culture: Kathleen M. Coleman, a professor of Latin at Harvard University, has written extensively on the Roman arena and teaches a course called Roman Games. Gladiatorial combat at Rome first appeared in the third century B.C. as part of funerary celebrations. Slaves, or sometimes prisoners of war, fought in combat in honor of the deceased. During the Late Republic gladiatorial combat began to gradually move out of the funerary scene. It becomes an index of the popularity of civic leaders outside Rome or the emperor in Rome. One key point is the deployment of violence as an ingredient in public entertainment. The Romans believed in physical bravery and its manifestation in combat as a cardinal virtue. And simultaneously they believed that persons of no status, particularly persons who had done something wrong, deserved physical punishment. The Roman arena was used to punish miscreants. Criminals were exposed to the beasts. It catered to an instinct in human nature that is attracted by the suffering and bloodletting of others. And this is certainly an element that is deployed in the modern entertainment media. Also, the extent to which we are distracted from the serious concerns of society by the glamour of public entertainment figures and the extravaganzas of the cinema and sports field represents a deep-seated human desire, familiar to the Romans, to be distracted from serious and troubling matters. And it was an effective tool to keep power in a few hands. We know that beast displays continued well into the sixth century. But early in the fifth century, gladiatorial displays finally seem to have ended throughout the Roman Empire. Probably due to a combination of factors: they became extremely expensive, and possibly the church may have had something to do with this, since the church fathers objected to pagan attractions and exhorted their flocks to at... Free Essays on Gladitorial Combat Free Essays on Gladitorial Combat Evaluate the importance of Gladiatorial combat to public entertainment to Roman culture: Kathleen M. Coleman, a professor of Latin at Harvard University, has written extensively on the Roman arena and teaches a course called Roman Games. Gladiatorial combat at Rome first appeared in the third century B.C. as part of funerary celebrations. Slaves, or sometimes prisoners of war, fought in combat in honor of the deceased. During the Late Republic gladiatorial combat began to gradually move out of the funerary scene. It becomes an index of the popularity of civic leaders outside Rome or the emperor in Rome. One key point is the deployment of violence as an ingredient in public entertainment. The Romans believed in physical bravery and its manifestation in combat as a cardinal virtue. And simultaneously they believed that persons of no status, particularly persons who had done something wrong, deserved physical punishment. The Roman arena was used to punish miscreants. Criminals were exposed to the beasts. It catered to an instinct in human nature that is attracted by the suffering and bloodletting of others. And this is certainly an element that is deployed in the modern entertainment media. Also, the extent to which we are distracted from the serious concerns of society by the glamour of public entertainment figures and the extravaganzas of the cinema and sports field represents a deep-seated human desire, familiar to the Romans, to be distracted from serious and troubling matters. And it was an effective tool to keep power in a few hands. We know that beast displays continued well into the sixth century. But early in the fifth century, gladiatorial displays finally seem to have ended throughout the Roman Empire. Probably due to a combination of factors: they became extremely expensive, and possibly the church may have had something to do with this, since the church fathers objected to pagan attractions and exhorted their flocks to at...

Games to Support Skills for Children with Disabilities

Games to Support Skills for Children with Disabilities Games are an effective tool to support instruction in special education. When your students know how to play a game, they can play it independently. Some board games and many electronic games are available commercially or online, but they dont always support the skills that your students need to build. At the same time, many online computer games fail to support social interaction, which is an important benefit of supporting instruction with board games. Reasons for Games Drill and Repetition: Students with disabilities often need lots and lots of practice on skills, beyond what they would receive in a general education class, in a more naturalistic approach to instruction. We also know that students have difficulty generalizing skills, so games that use math or reading skills in a game will motivate children to use those skills across more social settings.Social Skill Training and Practice: Many children with disabilities, especially developmental disabilities such as autism spectrum disorders, have difficulty with social interactions. Board games support waiting, turn taking, and even losing gracefully, which both typical, and children with special needs struggle with. Games can even be designed to support social skills, such as a social skill game that requires students to complete a social task successfully (Say hello to a friend, etc.), to stay on a square on the board, or you can make some social skills cards for existing games (Chance cards on Monopoly?). Peer-Mediated Instruction:  Children with disabilities benefit from having skills modeled by typically developing, non-disabled peers. Those skills will include both academic and social skills. The typical peers will be sure to check the work of their challenged peers and can supervise play. Games as part of inclusion give both groups opportunities to practice skills, exercise some socially appropriate behavior, and build positive peer relationships. Bingo Kids love bingo. Kids with disabilities love bingo because it doesnt require knowing lots of rules, and since everyone plays through every game, it scores well on the engagement scale. It requires that they listen; identify the numbers, words, or pictures on the card; place a cover on the squares (fine motor skills), and recognize the pattern of covered squares. Many bingo games are commercial and available through online or brick and mortar stores. Teaching Made Easier, an online subscription tool for making games is an excellent way to make sight word, number, or other sorts of bingos, including picture bingos. Kinds of Bingo Games Vocabulary Building Bingos: These bingos have children cover pictures of animals or items in other categories to build receptive language.  Number Recognition Bingos: Teaching Made Easier makes it possible to customize the range of numbers used for Bingo. You can make one set of cards that uses numbers from twenty to forty to give students practice in recognizing numbers larger than twenty, but not the whole shooting match up to 100. You can also ask students with strong number recognition to read the cards, as it helps them build their skills in reading numbers aloud. Educators often recommend that some recitation in math instruction is included to be sure the numbers also get into students mouths.  Math Fact Bingo: Call numbers and have students cover matching math facts (i.e., call 12 and students can cover 2 x 6 or 3 x 4) Board Games You can build a board game based on any number of different games: Parchesi, Sorry, Monopoly. The simplest games are simple games that start at one place and end at the finish line. They can be used to support counting, or they can be used to support specific skills. You can use dice, or you can create spinners. Many Math series provide spinners that you can adapt: Once again, Teaching Made Easier provides a template for spinners. Kinds of Board Games Counting Games: An example is Halloween Rumble. Start with a serpentine path divided into squares, use dice (to building counting and adding skills) or a spinner. You can use a spinner for skip counting games (by 2s and 5s).Social Skills Games: Design this after games like Life or Monopoly, where students take cards to complete a social skill. Perhaps you might have a stack of requests such as, Ask a friend for help on your math, or a greeting: Greet a teacher in school. Quiz Show Games A great way to help students prepare for a test is a Quiz Show format. Build your game like Jeopardy and make you categories support whatever topic your students are preparing for. This is an especially good tactic for a secondary teacher who can pull a group from a content area class to prepare for a test. Games Create Winners! Games are a great way to engage your students, as well as give them lots of opportunities to practice skills and content knowledge. They seldom realize that the whole time they are competing with their classmates, they are supporting learning with their peers. It can provide some formative assessment information, letting you see whether a student understands a skill, a content area or a set of concepts.