21 writing prompts in Italian

 

There are many different topics for  student to write about. You can use the calendar as inspiration, student interests or tie it to the topics you are teaching in their lessons.  Beginners might write only in English as a cultural component. Then, move into simple assignments in simple Italian as their Italian grows with more vocabulary and grammar.  Advanced students can extend their writing in Italian with more detail and a wider vocabulary.

1.     Writing in future tense on New Year’s Resolutions.  I will write in my journal, learn to cook, walk the dog.  Timely phrases: every day, all day, every week, every month, sometimes, always, every Tuesday etc.

2.     Descriptive writing about Carnevale,  This is usually in April and is a grand parade of colorful costumes, masks and celebration.  Ask students to describe the clothes, colours and foods of the festival.  Is there music playing live? Is the setting in Venice or another  Italian city? Are there gondolas?

3.     Describe an Italian summer.  Include weather, setting, summer holidays away from home at the sea or mountains, foods including gelato.  What is their favourite flavor?

4.     Describe an Italian autumn as the warm summer turns to reds and oranges of autumn before wintry white. What activities are popular in autumn? Are people playing soccer? Playing in a pile of autumn leaves?

5.     Describe an Italian winter.  The climate, the food, the setting and the activities.  Touch of the role of winter in an Italian Christmas.  Is there a snowplough to help people have streets clear of snow.  Have people salted their driveway to make it less slippery?

6.     Describe an Italian spring as nature wales from winter.  What plants are in bloom>? Which colours are starting to appear?   Can you hear young birds or see butterflies perhaps?  Is there a river starting to flow after being frozen over winter?

7.     June 2^nd is the national day of Italy.  What festivities are planned in terms of food, music and costumes? Is there a parade? What does the three colour flag of Italian represent?  How was Italy before this important date in history?  What had changed?

8.     Christmas in Italy is different for Australians, particularly because it is a European winter holiday.  There are no barbeques and sun and sand.  There is sometimes snow, and warm chestnuts and panettone to celebrate.  Many meet up with extended family of the aunts, uncles and cousins to catch up on family news.  Often the housewife makes a meal for all which may be homemade pasta and or seafood dishes.  Many Italians are Catholic and attend Midnight Mass on Christmas Day.

9.     Easter is also a religious holiday.  Many Italians are Catholics and attend Church over Easter of Pasqua to recognise the resurrection of Christ. Young people often spend Christmas with family and Easter with their friends.  They may travel for the long weekend to the seas or mountains. Chocolate is a part of Easter in Italy, but the focus is on the symbol of the egg.  The Easter bunny does not feature in the Italian Easter.

10.   When is your birthday? What day of the week were your born?  What is your star sign?  Does your family have special traditions on birthdays?  What do you like to do to celebrate?  Maybe you have a party or a sleepover? Some families like to wrap presents in strange shapes to disguise the present.  Then, the game is to guess the present before you open it.

11.   What is your school like?  How is it different from a typical Italian school?  Which type of high school would you choose?  Maybe science, classic or a trade school.  What subjects do you like?  What subjects are you good at?

12.   Who is in your family? Do you have a sister or a brother? Are you the youngest or the oldest? Do you live in a house or an apartment? Many Italians live in apartments close to town.  Australians are luckier to have room for a backyard to play soccer or have a dog.

13.   Do you have a pet?  What would your dream pet be? Many Italians cannot have pets in their apartment. Describe what it is like to live in an apartment with an elevator and no yard.

14.   Do you play sport?  Many Australians like football or cricket. Many Italians like soccer. How often do you play sport?  Do you play with friends or in a team?  What are your team colours?

15.   When you finish school, what would you like to be?  Describe a few jobs and what would be great about working in that job.

Research based topics:

16.  Introduce an Italian person. Write a profile or an interview about that person.  Include name, date or birth, job, where they lived and any interesting facts you learn about them.

17.   Introduce an Italian place. Write a profile or a poster about that place.  Include name, region of Italy, date founded if known and any interesting facts you learn about them. Perhaps some famous people lived there, or it was the place of an important event in history.

18.   Introduce an Italian event in history. Write a profile or a poster about that event.  Include place and region of Italy, date or dates of the event, who was involved, and any interesting facts you learn about them. Perhaps a famous person was there at the same time.

19.   Introduce an Italian food. Write a recipe or make a poster about that food.  Include name, where in Italy is from and any interesting facts you learn about them. Perhaps you can make it to share with your friends and family.  You might choose a pizza, pasta or gelato recipe.

20.   Introduce an Italian musician. Write a profile or an interview about that musician.  Include name, date or birth, job, where they lived and any interesting facts you learn about them. You might choose an opera singer, an orchestral musician or a pop singer  you history or modern day.

21.   Introduce a famous Italian building. Write a profile or make a poster about that building.  Include its name in Italian and English, date built (if known), who designed &/or built it, which Italian region it is in, is it still standing today and any interesting facts you learn about it.

Please comment to share any topic ideas you have tried with your class :-)

Duolingo - FREE App - Review

Have you discovered Duolingo? See the website to have a look that this unique product: https://www.duolingo.com/

This is a summary of Duolingo features written by a fan.  I am enjoying being a part of Duolingo since it started.  I have highlighted in bold my hopes for Duolingo in the future.  We will have to wait and see as the Duolingo journey unfolds. 

·      Duolingo currently 5 languages available for English language speakers: Italian, French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.

·      Lessons start from the very beginning.  Early lessons include pictures to help with new word recognition.  Then as your knowledge grows the game is text based.  This works as the focus is on translation through reading or listening and input through writing.

·      You can choose when you want to practise listening and speaking.  There is always the option to toggle the microphone and speakers on/off.  This is useful if you are on the bus or sitting in a waiting room and don’t want to be watched while you talk to your phone using your new language skills.

·      It will always be a free app: whether you use it as a web app on your laptop or desktop computer or you use it in other devices from iPhone to iPod to Android phone.  It is now available for iPhone and Android devices J

·      An independent study has proven that Duolingo is more effective at language teaching than a university level language course.  I believe this is supported by the gamification aspects.  It is social to play with friends online and/or new language learning buddies.  It is using a healthy level of competition to better your own knowledge, compete with friends and now on the new update, you can also compete with Duobot.  Duobot is useful if your friends online are not available for a challenge in the same minutes you have free: either your lunch break or your commute to work/school.

·      The web app has a few different functions than the app for mobile devices.  You can complete timed tests as well as the lessons you access on the go.  You can test your translation skills as you grow your working knowledge of vocab and grammar.  As you level up in the lessons, gaining more XP (experience points) you will be better prepared to tackle longer and more challenging translations.

·      As students complete lessons, there are three hearts (like lives) at risk.  Students complete enough correct translations (usually 10 in a lesson) without running out of hearts to finish the lesson.  The XP earned from a lesson is the total of the number of correct translations PLUS the number of hearts not used.  This system insists students pass with a sufficient skill level and reward students who did not make any careless mistakes.  Early on in levels and lessons, it is useful for beginners that the lessons are never timed.  The timed tests available on the web based app are a good measure of progress combining speed and accuracy.

·      An additional scoring system to XP is the lingots.  They are like high powered points to reward you on your language learning journey. You cash in lingots to reward yourself with outfits for your avatar, a timed translation test or specialised vocab in your preferred language.  I particularly like the timed translation tests.  I am challenging myself to rotate through the 5 available languages from English speakers.  I chip away at lessons, tests and games earning XP until I level up in a language.  When this coincides with 25 lingots, I challenge myself to complete a timed translation test to see how I am progressing.  It is effective testing because it is timed.  It would be useful to see the timer counting down during the test.

·      The lessons are set up sequentially in a language tree.  As you progress through more lessons, new lesson sections are unlocked as earned.  Completed lessons have full completed progress bars.  This information is updated over time.  As you complete later lessons, perhaps alternating with some real world translation practice and strengthening your skills, each word experience level is maintained in the Duolingo database.  When a learned word is not practised it looses more progress bars in the original lesson learned.   This is a reminded to go back and revisit lessons to review your vocabulary.  This is welcome feature.  Just as you might like and work in the country of the language improving your language skills, Duolingo reminds you to maintain your early foundation of language skills.  It insists you build a good sense of the language from a strong foundation.  Any language learned at a university, school or community course would be better prepared before a test as a result of revising the current course content and checking back over earlier vocab learned on Duolingo. Duolingo also has levels of increasing difficulty.  Lesson levels from XP come from completing lessons at a competent level.  However, each level requires more and more XP to reach the next level.  There is also a translator's tier. The system here is similar.  The more online immersion articles you write and/or edit the more points you earn.  However, the system is now tweaked.  You need to be at least 90% accurate in your translation writing. It is determined by how many words are in the sentence.  Say for a ten word sentence, you need the support of at 5 approval votes with only minimal down votes to be acceptable.
 

·      Language coach is a optional feature.  Students can toggle on and off for each language course and select the time commitment they would like to make to each language.  Like many apps available nowadays, optional settings such as these put the user in control.  Are they keen to beat their personal best, beat their Duolingo friends or want  to make their language learning at their own pace without a nagging daily reminder?

·      There are more language courses still in Beta form while they are being developed including: Indonesian and Dutch and Turkish (all for English speakers).  There are other languages in Beta (Italian for Spanish, English for Korean, English for Thai, German for Russian).

·      I would like to see the same features on the mobile app. It is good to see the Duobot available on mobile devices as a close match to timed tests.  I wish I could work on a web based translation on the go as well.  It is exciting to finally see your translator’s rating level up.  They may be few and far between, but the translator’s levels are well earned.

·      Duolingo has already one two awards from two of the big companies: Apple (iPhone) has awarded Duolingo App of the Year and Google Play (Android) has awarded Duolingo Best of the Best.

·      Duolingo has a merchandise line available for the keen Duolingoists to promote the app, their language learning and be an active part of the community of learners.

·      And finally, the discussion board gives Duolingo users an opportunity to share their learning, ask questions of Duolingo features, discuss vocab and grammar points of the language being learned, and even request new features for future updates.  There is a down vote/up vote system to help the admin team of Duolingo.  This is useful to monitor which features are most requested and may be added to the Duolingo agenda for future updates soon.

·      I would love to see Afrikaans and Welsh available soon.

Have you discovered a web app or mobile device for language learners?  Which one is your favourite?

4 song bundle of kids' songs in Italian .pdf - with download updates for LIFE

Product features:
• One page, per song verse - colour coded for tense and pronoun to teach student to recognise and use patterns
• Songs included:
• He’s got the whole world in his hands* (action song) 3 verses and bonus slide • If you are happy and you know it* (to teach emotions and body parts) 4 verses and bonus slide
• The Alphabet (to teach letters, sounds and spelling) 1 slide
• The Hokey Pokey* (to teach body parts) 2 verses and bonus slide
* extra slide for song as cloze for students to create own extra verse

Teaching ideas:
• classroom display
• slideshow on interactive whiteboard
• print for student reference
• print for students to write own verses

Student activities:
• student reference sheet
• print in black and white for students to highlight irregular verb forms
• print in black and white for students to highlight patterns across pronouns ie. suffix endings for pronoun voi across –ERE verbs.

Suggestions for use:
• student copy for reference/ teacher use as display or demonstration
• print, laminate or print on magnetic paper for whiteboard use
• A4 or A3 – check printer settings before printing

Made by Italienfrancese 2014

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First, vote then, see what is wanted by fellow teachers ☺

A big THANKYOU to my buyers.
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Focused word lists

I ask my students to brainstorm from prior knowledge. I want to see which direction it takes.  Each group is different when I have worked with adult beginners in the community to five years olds in the first year of school to twelve years olds at the end of primary school. This activity allows the scope of learning to be opened up more than if I was to share new vocabulary at the beginning of a new unit of work or a new chapter from the textbook.  If I merely, sent around a photocopy of the vocab list and asked “Which words can you predict? Which words do you know? And which ones do you not have any idea about?”  I would not stimulate the same discussion in the group of learners.  And one or two at least would be nodding off in the corner.

PRONOUNS

I introduce pronouns as hand gestures.  There are six pronoun groups: I, you (singular), he/she/it, we, you (plural) and they. The first three are all singular.  The last three are all plural.  Within the singular groups, I is in the first person, you is second person and he, she, it and even formal you (for example, in Italian) are third person. 

First person refers back to the speaker.  First person in the plural is we (referring back to us). Second person it the listener or person you are speaking to.  Third person is a different person/group from the speaker and the listener.  These ‘others’ are being spoken about and not directly to.

Beginners in learning a language (be it foreign or improving their knowledge of their native language) often confuse these terms and labels.  Often initial knowledge up until a focused lesson on pronouns, is intuitive and is what sounds/feels/looks right to the speaker/writer.  When you start to learn a foreign language, you don’t have years of experience to lean on to determine what sounds/feels/looks right to you as the speaker/writer.  

I teach pronouns with hand gestures to simplify some of these of the beginning language learner. Most of these hand gestures are obvious, but help the learner to process the context of who is speaking, who is listening and/or who is being spoken about.

PRONOUN LIST

In the singular, point to the appropriate person. 

In the plural, circle in the air to indicate the group of 2 or more people.

For ‘I’, simply point to the speaker.

For ‘you singular’ point to the listener.

For ‘he/she/it/formal you’ point to who the speaker is telling the listener about.

For ‘we’ circle in the air to refer to the speaker and the listener.

For ‘you plural’ circle in the air to refer to both listeners.

For ‘they’, circle in the air to refer to two or more other people being spoken about by the speaker to the listener.

CALENDAR

A basic list for learning any language.  Note: in Italian days and months, both DO NOT have capital letters.  In English, they always have capital letters. Just a convention to be aware of.

NATIONALITIES AND LANGUAGES

A surprising list for nationalities and languages. In Italian, countries and cities have capitals.  However, nationalities and languages DO NOT have capitals.

IDIOMS

It’s always a good idea to occasionally take a break form the grammatical side of learning a new language to explore some idioms.  Here are some of my favourites: Italian olio di gomito (lit. oil of elbow) is elbow grease. French la grasse matinée (lit. the fat morning) is a sleep in.

HOLIDAYS

I work with students to brainstorm and research some common festivals and holidays.  Start with festivities common to both cultures: birthdays, Christmas, Easter, even Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.  Then, challenge their knowledge / introduce some cultural holidays to the target language: national holidays, regional festivals like Carnevale.

THE NEWS

I brainstorm from the news: It is always powerful to start with common knowledge like world news or famous people.  Recent natural disasters, known disasters even Pompeii in Italy, famous sports people, films stars, singers, tv personalities.  Most people surprise themselves with their own prior knowledge or even with how much they knew but didn’t realize was linked to Italy as a country or the Italians as a people.

TIME AND PLACE

This is one of my favourite topics – because you can take it anywhere to any place and time: list in three column famous people, famous places, historical events in time. Each group takes this in their own direction. Sometimes modern people, sometimes more historical.  Sometimes recent political events, or recent natural disasters that made the world news. Some people are more interested in Italy when it became a Republic or the influence of the Roman Empire.  There is something for everyone.  Children are often either more interested in the modern famous people or the gladiator era in to main groups.

10 Favourite places to visit in Italy

10 places I visited in Italy

1.     The Colosseum in Rome – always a big tourist attraction.  I went in on my own, because my host family in Rome did not want to pay for the attraction they had seen before.  The atmosphere was set with moss growing over the ruins, a tour guide walking groups through the building and actors dressed up in period clothing for tourists taking photos.

2.     The Vatican in Vatican City – It was an amazing atmosphere to see the Pope speaking to the people on the last Sunday before Christmas in 1999. The square was decorated with Christmas spirit complete with a very tall, Christmas tree next to a life size nativity display.

3.     The glass maker in Venice – first visitors in Jan 2 2000.  It was spectacular to see a glass maker use his breath little by little to blow a piece of glass into the shape of a horse.  Very fragile with a mazing detail.  And it did not take him long to make.  We watched the process of heating and moulding the glass in around 20 minutes.

4.     Milan train station –  I travelled from the Milan air port across to Vicenza, Veneto train station to meet my second host family in 2003.  On my trip home, I looked trough the shops and found a collection of products made into fridge magnets.  I looked and looked at them all and finally decided on a wood oven frozen pizza, and two packets of dry pasta.  Very cute momentos of the time and place to keep as souvenirs.

5.     The parmesan cheese factory in Reggio nell’Emilia – I was lucky enough to see the cheese making process and storage.  I visited a local cheese maker who was friends with my host family in Reggio nell’Emilia.  Also, I had a quick look at a small Italian bakery in action.

6.     the car free centre in Reggio nell’Emilia – It was refreshing to see the city council organising green transport.  Big car parks were put in next to city bus stops.  Free bikes were available to ride around the city using green energy.  It was a nice approach to keep cars and car pollution out of the city centre and brought many people though the city to shop and meet up with friends.

7.     The bell tower in Florence was stunning.  Old architecture maintained over the years for the community and tourists to explore.  The bell tower was open for an entrance fee to let tourists climb the many steps to a great view.  Coming up the last stairs, you step into view of the cityscape from high up the bell tower.  It was foggy day but the fog over the town still made spectacular panoramas for my own photos to share of my travels.

8.     Winter in Italy with snow.  This is spectacular for anyone who does not have snow back home. I was so hopeful for seeing some snow that I thought the first heavy hail storm was snow.  I went up to the roof top of my host family’s apartment block in Rome.  I took photos and showed my host family.  What looked to me like a blanket of white snow, ended up melting within half an hour.  A blanket of hail must be much thinner than a proper blanket of snow.

9.     Christmas in Italy with nativity displays.  Most towns on each Christmas visit had a display of some sort or another.  Some houses set up a model nativity even taking up half a room.  The most impressive town in northern Italy has a community put nativity scenes in their windows counting to more than 100 displays.  It was wonderful bringing out the community and visitors in Christmas spirit, despite the cold weather.

10. New Year’s in Italy with friends in the mountains. I stayed with friends for three days in their mountain apartment.  We enjoyed the little community but found it to be more like camping when the pipes had frozen over the week before.  We left a bucket of snow near the open fire to melt down to water.  Washing hands became rubbing snow and a bar of soap together.  On the last day, we put snow melted to water into a watering can.  Together we soaped up dishes and then the other person was the tap/watering can to rinse of soap dish by dish.

Ten things I would love to see and experience

1.     anywhere south of Rome

2.     Pompeii in Naples

3.     Sicily

4.     Sardegna

5.     Little Italy tourist park

6.     the leaning tower of Pisa, Tuscany

7.     an outdoor concert

8.     the Carnevale in Venice

9.     Easter in Italy

10. Summer in Italy

What is your favourite place in Italy? Where would you love to go next time?

Reflections on teachers’ needs in languages

This is a summary of the language learning community I have been welcomed into on Teachers Pay Teachers. Some schools will have one or two languages on the curriculum.  Others will be seeking trained teachers in languages, but be unable to attract a teacher for the moment.  My first teaching job was in a regional town.  I took the position after no one had filled the vacancy in the previous 4 years. It was excited about the challenge straight after university. The town was welcoming but it was a challenge to lift all students with a four year gap in their Italian knowledge towards year level standard for 5 – 12 year olds.

Through TpT, I have learned from my generous and supportive returning customers

Facts

·       Italian buyers make 33% of purchases of Italian products

·       French buyers make 27% of purchase of French products

·       These languages are then followed by Spanish, German and Portuguese.

·       Customers have bought 60 different products from my store.

·       The biggest range is the Italian range of 34 different products.

·       Followed by French, Spanish, German and Portuguese in descending order.

Observations

Making products in more languages reaches students in more schools.

·       Action: I create resources in Italian and French, and for the growing need for similar resources to support school learning other languages.

Making language bundles makes resources more affordable

·       Action: I bundle the number chart sets in languages to discount the price and make it more accessible to teachers

Teachers need beginner and advanced resources to support all students

·     Action:  I create a range of numbers resources across languages to support from 1-10, 1-30 and 1-100.

·     Action: I create colour coded vocabulary and sentence building to support gender and number patterns in nouns and highlight the roles of verbs and nouns.

Authentic texts make authentic learning experiences

·      Action: I create a bundle of activities that are useful with any text.  You can adapt it to any text and use the graphic organisers to help students interact and respond to the text. One example is newspaper reading comprehension activities.

Conclusions
 I am amazed with how much support there already is in the TpT community from my fellow teachers. If you are a langauges teacher looking to start your own TpT store, try to make a variety of resources.  If you know more than one language to increase your reach to more students dramatically,  If you are artistic, many teachers like to buy bright and colourful resources with illustrations particularly for primary school children. If you are not so artistic, make space in your resources for students to have the opportunity to draw their own.  Students who make their own connections will remember more of the work throughout the unit.

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Happy Teaching and Learning Languages!
Cheers,