Tiziana Dodds

• School: Genazzano FCJ College

• Language: Italian

• Year Level: 8

Context

• A class of Year 8 students who had been studying Italian for 18 months were chosen for this investigation.

• The purpose of the investigation was to examine different quality and thinking tools in order to engage all learners and enable students to understand how language works.

What did you do?

• I commenced with a class survey- the question asked was How clear I am about why we have studied and learnt the things we have in our language classes

• The students gave individual responses to this question

Pre survey.How clear I am about why we have studied and learnt the things we have in our language classes.0 -----------------------------------------5----------------------------------------10Not clear sort of clear absolutely clear

Results of survey:

Ratings 0 -4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Studentresults

0 1 1 10 1 4 6

Total students present: 23

Process • After the survey had been conducted a class

discussion followed which focused on the following questions:

• What do we use language for?• How do we communicate?• The answers to these questions were listed on

the board and the word sentence was isolated• The class created a Sunshine Wheel answering

the question - What makes up a sentence?

Discussion questions and answers.Why do we use language? (What purpose does language have?)

To travelTo understand

To communicateTo talk with people

To travelHow do we communicate?

TalkingWriting

GesturesListeningReadingSinging

What form does language take in all of these? What do we use?Sentences

- sentences are made up of words which are put together in a certain way.

Construction of Sunshine Wheel

Sentences-are made up of words

Subject

verbs

articles

prepositions

nouns

adjectives

conjunctions

punctuation

• After a discussion of the Sunshine Wheel the students added the Italian concepts that they had learnt to the wheel thereby creating a Spider Map

• They summarized rules that they knew onto the map

• This created a sunshine wheel expanded into a spider map

Process continued

Sentences Made up of words

Subject

verbs

essereavere

fareandare

-are-ere

-ire

nouns

adjectives

masculine

irregular

regular

articles‘o’ group –has 4 forms- o, a, i, e-

Masculine and feminine, singular and plural

‘e’ group – has 2 forms – e, i.

Singular & plural only

ill’

definite lola

l’indefinite

i

gli

le

un uno una un’

io tu lui, lei noivoi

loro

conjunctions

e

ma

feminine singular

plural

prepositionsa

conin

da

punctuation

Adjectives usually follow the noun

What did you learn?

• The students enjoyed the activity and felt they were more in control as they understood why they had been taught the various grammatical concepts

• They said that it now all made sense as before it was in pieces and now they could see how it all fits together

• They now refer to this wheel / map when they complete tasks – it has become another tool for them

• It is very worthwhile to unpack the learning for the students so that there is a real purpose in what they study

• I have started the Sunshine Wheel in a Year 7 class – I hope to build the wheel with them so that they are aware of how the taught language parts fit together

Showcase Presentation Instructions

• Please bring this Powerpoint to Day 4 saved on a USB stick

• If possible, please bring your own laptop

• Customise the pages to reflect your investigation – maybe try some photos from www.flickrcc.bluemountains.net

• The presentation only needs to be 5 minutes long 5 minutes for questions