Pre-K, In the Spirit of Museums

Dear Parents,
Week by week, we've been making progress on our introduction of vocabulary (colors, numbers, food and body parts), simple phrases/questions ("ciao!" and "come ti chiami?") and topics in Italian culture. The students so far have been really involved in each individual lesson, and have also been remembering and incorporating parts of past lessons into the following week. Feeding off of this momentum, we wanted to lead a lesson this week which drew on all these past "skills" in preparation for our final class: a trip to the Sackler Museum!
For this lesson, we wanted to simulate what an actual trip to the museum might be like. We began by lining the class up with their name-tags in two rows (much as they would get ready on a field trip) and navigating through the classroom until we reached the "museum." This area had a painted self-portrait by Max Beckmann and a sign reading "Museo" and many of the students observed right away that they had entered a new place: a museum. When we asked who had been to one before, many raised their hand eagerly, and when we inquired what kind of behavior one should have in a museum, they responded with answers like "Be quiet" and "Don't run." We took this opportunity to introduce three basic phrases about behavior in a museum, so that we could be prepared for our trip in May: "Siediti" (sit down), "Fate silenzio" (be quiet), and "Non toccare" (don't touch.) At this point, they were all really attentive and were showing great understanding that they needed "museum behavior."
We next started talking about the painting before us using old vocabulary and skills to describe the man. We asked about the man's face and when prompted/repeated, many students were able to remember the words "occhi" (eyes), "boca" (mouth), "naso" (nose), "orecchi" (ears) and "faccia" (face). Because these words were a bit more challenging, though, there was more involvement when we asked about numbers: "Quanti occhi sono?" (How many eyes are there?) About half the students shout out "Due!" (two), which we were really excited about. Likewise, when we asked about colors -- "Che colore è il suo vestito?" (What color is his suit), some students responded "nero" (black) while others said the English version. This combination of Italian and English questions/answers by us three teachers, but also by the students in the class, really helped to re-enforce old words without doing a mere translation between the two languages. The visual aid of "Max" was also really stimulating for the students, because they had an actual picture in which all these elements were nicely composed. A bit more challenging were the new, more obscure words, like "farfalla" (bowtie) and "fianco" (hip.) The students most likely did not remember these words, but it was good to introduce them in the context of the others.
We also wanted to incorporate a new kind of word: a verb. Most of our words thus far have been nouns (colors, numbers, food, etc.), but we thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce "doing" and "feeling" words that we could incorporate with the students' interests and activities outside of class. We used both the portrait of Max and ourselves as a model for what types of actions/expressions a person could have: "triste" (sad), "felice" (happy), "arrabiato" (angry) and "serio" (serious). The class was really engaged in this face-making activity and many of them did the actions themselves.
We wanted to sum up the lesson by some creative activity in which the kids could apply what they had learned to something they made. We decided to make self-portraits, just like Max Beckmann did. Each student was given a colored dot (which was also a review of colors -- many of the students were able to request their color in Italian, as well, calling out "rosso" and "blu"!) When they got a dot, they had to sit on it, to make sure that everyone had enough room for their drawing. For the next 5 minutes, everyone drew self-portraits showing activities they liked to do outside of class (reading, playing with action figures, walking, etc.) as well as facial expressions. For the most part, the class was really focused on their drawing, but we continued to use our three phrases when things got a little louder.
At the end of the drawing session, we shared our self-portraits and again tied the lesson into a previous week in which we had read the book, "The Girl In the Castle Inside the Museum." The portraits they had just drawn were portraits for this girl so that she wouldn't get lonely! After collecting the portraits, we got ready to leave the museum, again lining up in two rows and making sure we were all "faccendo silzenio." We navigated the classroom and left the museum area -- a successful trip!
From this class, we are so excited to actually visit the Sackler Museum in May. The students are extremely prepared not only to be in a museum, but also to respond to the artwork they see there with a few Italian words and a ton of English ones! We hope to show them the actual portrait of Max so that they can get a sense of the real painting, as well as do another creative activity in one of the other galleries. Best of all, we will bring their portraits to the museum so they can see them in this new environment! We hope after our visit you all continue going to museums and asking questions about the pieces which can re-enforce the colors and activities being expressed in the artwork.
Until next time,

Julia, Lam and Giancarlo