News from our Languages Room

Now that the children in Prep are at school full time they have started to learn Italian as timetabled on Wednesdays.  It was lovely to get to know each of them and to feel their enthusiasm.  Learning a language in the early years at school is very beneficial to a child’s development. It improves memory, concentration, listening skills and enhances creativity.  

Apart from learning Italian once a week in the Italian room,  the children are also exposed to Italian in their classroom with their classroom teacher.  At St Bridget’s we are co-learners of the Italian language which means that students and teachers alike are learning Italian together. 

Over the last few weeks the children have been learning classroom language, such as asking to go to the bathroom and asking to get a drink, which their classroom teacher will encourage them to use daily. They have learnt about the colours in the Italian flag and the map of Italy which resembles a boot.  The children have started to learn basic greetings and how to introduce themselves in Italian.

 The children have settled in well and I look forward to teaching them on Wednesday.

Over the course of this term, the children in the Junior Learning Community have been studying a unit of work called ‘La Mia Famiglia’, to coincide with our whole school Inquiry theme of Community.  Our family is one of the first and most important communities that they will belong to.

The children have learnt  new vocabulary related to the different family members in both their nuclear and extended family. They have drawn and labelled their own family in Italian. The children have looked at some basic family trees and were able to say who the people were according to their position on the family tree.  They had a go at drawing and labelling their own family tree including grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins. The children have settled in very well this term and have impressed me with their excellent pronunciation and efforts. Well done everyone.

This term in Italian, in keeping with our Inquiry unit of Community, the children in Years 3/4 and 4/5/6 have been learning about the Italian Community.  They studied some of the geographic features of Italy and how theses differ from Australia.  The children read about Matteo, a boy who lives with his extended family in Northern Italy and how life in Italy offers some similarities and some differences from our life in Australia. The children read about going to school in Italy, housing and the lack of land and the food culture which is very different to ours in Australia. The children studied the map of Italy with its twenty regions. They researched the capital cities of the different regions and chose cities that they wanted to investigate further. Some children chose Rome (the Eternal city) with its tourist attractions and famous landmarks.  Others researched the Leaning Tower of Pisa and The Colosseum.  They reported back to the class giving interesting facts and statistics. 

The children studied Roman Numerals, namely where they originated and when.  They were able to present numbers as Roman numerals and were able to name places where Roman numerals are still used today.  

 In the language component, prepositions and nouns were the main focus of this unit.  The students were asked to indicate and express where places were located either on a map or diagram of a city using nouns and prepositions. Well done everyone.

Kind Regards

Mrs Gina Michelli

Italian Teacher