Specialist Report: Italian

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CIAO!

Aitken Hill Primary School students SONO MOLTO FELICE (are very happy) to be back at school, learning new vocabulary and revising known vocabulary in our Italian room!

Students from Prep to Six have been learning new words about IL TEMPO meteorologico - The Weather, such as: il sole (the sun), il vento (the wind) and la pioggia (the rain.)

We have also been revising i giorni della settimana (the days of the week) the days and i mesi dell'anno (the months of the year) in Italian.

We have also been practising our conversational skills with simple phrases such as: ciao (hello), buongiorno (goodmorning), and come stai? (how are you?) and combining that with questions about our new weather vocabulary, such as 'Come fa il tempo?' (What is the weather like? Or the literal translation = what does the weather do/make?)

We will also revise questions and answers about our favourite colours, and our birthdays, and add that to our ever growing Italian conversational skills!

All students are also continuing to revise the numbers 0-100 and beyond, and learning the difference between the use of cardinal and ordinal numbers (regular: 1,2,3... and ordered: 1st, 2nd, 3rd…) and that importantly in Italian, only regular numbers are used for the calendar dates!

Another interesting fact is that the calendar year is only ever read as the complete number - so 2021 is not read as twenty twentyone (which in Italian would be venti ventuno). Instead, the year in Italian is always read completely, such as two thousand and twenty one, which in Italian would be duemilaventuno!

With the holiday season fast approaching, we are looking forward to learning about LA BEFANA, a lesser known but culturally significant figure in Italy. La Befana is a sweet, elderly woman who delivers presents to children on the 6th of January! This is also the date of the Epiphany, which is of spiritual significance among many Italians.

During the holiday season, Italians enjoy sharing Panettone: a delicious sweet bread, frittelli: mini donuts, and crostoli: a sweet crispbread. These delicious treats usually stocked in every bakery, supermarket and deli in Italy throughout the holidays right up to Carnevale in February - especially crostoli and frittelli, and gnocchi is also a traditional pasta to eat at Carnevale time. We look forward to carnival celebrations next year!

Finalmente, (finally) a  reminder for students to download the DUOLINGO app if you haven’t already - it's free, and you can practise Italian at home, on a smartphone, iPad or computer!

Grazie mille! (many thanks!)

Well done to all of the students who actively participated online during our lockdowns this year, and a big thank you to parents who were able to support their children to carry on with their work as much as possible. 

Thank you for all of your support,

Best wishes,

Signora Michelle 

Italian Studies