Students from preschool to Year 6 are able to learn the Italian language via several options at Yarralumla Primary School depending on their age, background and preference.
At Montessori, students are provided with one to two short sessions per week to familiarise the children with basic vocabulary and instructions in Italian. It is a preliminary introduction to the sounds and cadence of Italian and a good springboard for children before their transition into Kindergarten and the bilingual program.
K-6 English-Italian Bilingual Program
This program is the recommended choice to learn Italian for all newly enrolled Kindergarten students. It is also recommended for all students enrolling in higher grade levels after an initial interview with the Principal to gauge their suitability. The program is designed to:
- meet students' language learning needs at their developmental age
- build students' oral, communicative and written language skills so they can achieve the language proficiency levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), an international standard for describing language ability. It describes language ability on a six-point scale, from A1 for beginners, up to C2 for those who have mastered a language
- enable them to achieve by the time they have completed Year 6, an A1/A2 standard of the Common European Framework of Reference in the Italian language.
Students in the bilingual program learn the content of the Australian Curriculum through Italian language. Italian is used to introduce, summarise and revise content with very limited switches to English to explain specific language aspects of the content or vocabulary items.
Teachers use a variety of strategies and techniques such as visual cues and body gestures, to model and repeat Italian language constantly for students. This is to assist students acquire new structures and vocabulary for the development of language skills such as accuracy and fluency.
More information about how the bilingual program works can be found via this link directly to Bilingual Program on the drop down menu.
The English Stream Program is recommended to students if they meet either one or all of the following criteria:
- they are non-English speaking background students and require further intense tuition in English
- they are not meeting English reading or writing benchmarks for their developmental age and require further support with their learning in English
- they are already pluri-lingual and do not wish to learn another language
- their preference is to learn curriculum content mostly in English