Italian at St Mary MacKillop School, Term 1, Semester 1.

Each class receives a forty-five minute Italian lesson per week. During these lessons the students consolidate their learning by participating in activities that use words from prior learning. They are also exposed to new words, phrases and grammatical structures. Topics are learnt over two terms as this allows for a more complete unit of work to be completed.Every lesson commences with the attendance call, poems or songs, revision and then a new activity.

This semester our general topic isSchooland the Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) topic is Regions of Italy. These topics are taught on alternate weeks. In the school topic, students will learn words for areas around the school, subjects, telling the time, comparing school life in Italy and Australia, everyday classroom phrases and commands including ‘May I go to the bathroom?’, ‘Sorry I’m late.’, replying to the attendance call and ‘close the door’ just to name a few. The IBL topic is Regions of Italy. I will be giving the students a region to research. Students will gather information about the region and this will include the region’s flag, local food, famous landmarks, important people, coat of arms etc.

During the first week, the students discussed the Code of conduct they would like in the Italian room. We have chosen the 5 most important ones and they are: Come with a positive attitude, do your best and be your best, respect the speaker and listen, ignore others that are silly and use good manners. These phrases are displayed in the classroom in Italian. One goal for the Year 3-7 students is to be able to say these in Italian and the Year 1 and 2 students to be able to say at least 1 of them.

In the Italian classroom, I continue to expose students with a variety of Italian experiences. As stated in previous curriculum letters, these include watching television programs in Italian, listening to Italian music, playing games such as Doggy, doggy who’s got your bone (said in Italian), Tombola (Bingo) and Simone dice (Simon says), using the iPads or computers to play language based internet games or assist with gathering information or reading Italian picture books. We are lucky to have the facilities to be able to have this in the Italian classroom. Benefits for using these include:

  • Students can get used to the sounds and rhythms of the language.
  • Students might notice certain words and phrases.
  • It helps to consolidate language they have been learning in the classroom.
  • Motivation is the key to learning a language.
  • Students may want to continue to watch translated programs on RAI YoYo (the Italian equivalent of ABC22) or on YouTube, which will increase their exposure to the language. That’s a great thing.

Outcomes for students in Reception to Year 2 include:

  • Interacting with the teacher and peers
  • Participate in shared action with peers and teacher, contributing ideas through key words, images, movement and song.
  • Participate in classroom routines, games, instructions and shared activities.
  • Locate specific items of information in texts using early literacy skills.
  • Share with others what they can express in Italian, and explain how meanings are similar or different.
  • Reproduce the sounds of the Italian language.
  • Notice and use some aspects of the Italian language system, including gender forms, simple sentence structures and the placement of adjectives.
  • Recognise that Italian and English borrow words from each other.

Outcomes for students in Year 3 and 4 include:

  • Participate in collaborative action in class experiences and activities.
  • Participate in everyday classroom activities by asking permission, requesting help, asking how to say or write something, asking for repetition, praising or complimenting.
  • Obtain and process factual information about people, routines, responsibilities and interests.
  • Give factual information about people, objects, places and events in texts supported by graphics or illustrations.
  • Listen to, view and read a range of imaginative texts for children, and discuss messages and impressions.
  • Create simple bilingual texts.
  • Experiment with pronunciation and intonation and use rules of spelling.
  • Use key grammatical structures to form simple sentences, including the use of possessive pronouns, prepositions, definite and indefinite articles, and gender and singular/plural forms.

Outcomes for students in Year 5 and 6 include:

  • Interact in classroom activities and create shared class routines.
  • Translate texts, recognising that words and meanings do not always correspond across languages, and expanding descriptions or giving examples where necessary to assist meaning.
  • Create simple bilingual texts and discuss what translates easily or not.
  • Develop pronunciation and intonation of Italian-specific sounds.
  • Use grammatical knowledge, to interpret and create meaning in Italian.

Outcomes for students in Year 7 include:

  • Participate in classroom activities, giving and following instructions, asking questions to clarify purpose, and describing procedures and actions taken.
  • Convey ideas and opinions by creating spoken, written and multimodal texts.
  • Create short bilingual texts such as captions, stories and commentaries.
  • Develop an understanding and use the sound system of Italian.
  • Use grammatical knowledge to extend meanings, including knowledge of irregular, reflexive and modal verbs.

There are many good websites and apps that you may wish to look at. Here are a few:

websites: Languages online: Mama Lisa:

Maestra Gemma, dinolinguo.com and . Apps include: Rosetta Stone, Babble, TicTic: learn Italian, Dino-lingo and did you know that you can even ask Siri to find a word in Italian! Try it out.

Francesca Tully, Italian teacher Mantenere la calma

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imparare l’italiano