Duration: 50 minutes weekly

Students are introduced to the Italian Language and Culture from Foundation.

The macroskills of listening, speaking, reading, writing and viewing are covered. A strong emphasis is placed on listening, viewing and speaking skills in Foundation.

Students develop communicative skills in the language, an understanding of how languages work as a system and intercultural understanding capability.

They work collaboratively with other students and reflect on their own heritage, culture and identity and reflect on the culture, beliefs and values of others.

Whenever possible, links are made to the classroom themes.

Links with literacy include: writing simple descriptive sentences (self-profile), procedural text (writing/giving instructions for recipes),authentic texts:producing: letter writing (making cards eg. Easter/mother’s day, father’s day, Christmas), and using: Il Globo Italian newspaper for researching (Olympic Medals), short imaginative writing (role plays) and numeracy: quantities and fractions (making pizza), counting (buzz, 21, age) ordinal numbers (la regata) Using measurement: bocce and geometry recognising shapes (Il Duomo a Milano)

Language:

• Students are engaged in: working with puppets, listening to, retelling and acting out stories, singing songs, developing their own mnemonics, playing games and viewing YouTube clips in the language.
• Pronunciation is developed through songs, rhymes and native speaker models.
• Students initially begin with pseudo communication and gradually develop their own personalised, authentic communication through making cards and posters, writing self profiles and recipes and producing and performing role plays.

Intercultural Knowledge:

Students study the major Italian festivals and sporting events held each year in Italy, including:

• Il Carnevale di Venezia
• Il Giro d’Italia
• La Festa della Repubblica
• Il Palio di Siena
• Il Ferragosto
• La Regata Storica a Venezia
• L’Epifania

They also take part in Bocce and Tombola and prepare simple Italian dishes including: Pizza Margherita, Bruschetta and Frullati.

Italian Day

All students from Foundation to Year 6 have the opportunity to take part in the parade on our annual Italian Day and immerse themselves in the Italian language and culture.