JK105 Parents and children in the North end

news form the Sackler

I will share this e-mail with the italian students and the parents of the children at G&P. Please, go see your child's artwork at the museum. You can tell your friends that your kid had his first big show at a museum when he was 6!!!

here the email:

Dear Patrizia and Cara,

We got the go-ahead from our deputy director to put together the display of the
Graham Parks students' self-portraits!

We'll be able to put together a display that will be up the weekend of May 15th.
The display will be in the space outside the entrance to the Sackler Lecture
Hall - there is a large bulletin board we can use, and we will set up an
additional table so there is space for all 58 art works and a description of
the project.

...to be continued, but wanted to share this good news!

Kelsey

Italiano al Sackler - by Matthew Da Silva

The students of Harvard’s Italian 96 class are taking a field trip. However, they won’t be alone. Students of the advanced language class are taking Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten students from Cambridge’s Graham and Parks School on a field trip to the Sackler Art Museum.



The Harvard students have been teaching the "bambini" Italian all semester long as a part of their class. In a few weeks, the semester’s work will culminate in a field trip to the Sackler.


To integrate the Italian language with the beautiful artwork the Sackler, the students have been rehearsing lesson plans that are both engaging and educational. From playing Italian “I-Spy” with still-life paintings to pointing out the parts of the face on a little girl painted by Van Gogh, the students have managed to make the artwork of the Sackler come to life – in Italian!


One student plans to create an entire story about a statue that is filled with seemingly random objects, while another will help the story of Aphrodite come to life. In each student’s presentation, integration of the Italian language is key. As the students they are working with have only been taking Italian for a couple of months, it is a difficult task to blend Italian into exciting lessons that the preschoolers and kindergarteners will find engaging. However, the students of Italian 96 have constructed brilliant lessons that combine the museum’s artwork with the Italian language in a fun, interesting manner.


While teaching youngsters a foreign language can be difficult on its own, policing a group of four and five year olds in a fine art museum is no easy task. However, the students, with help from their instructors and museum staff, have worked hard to ensure no mishaps will occur.


With excellent teaching, an exciting lesson plan, and beautiful artwork, the Italian 96 field trip to Sackler Museum promises to be one of the highlights of the academic year – both for the kindergarteners, and the college students.

Alezandra's Class 4/11/10

Hi Parents!

Today Stacey, Jackie and I started to speak more Italian to the children. While they seemed confused at first, they eventually got the idea and seemed to understand all of our instructions in Italian. It’s amazing how quickly they’ve learned!

After our customary song, “La Bella Lavanderina”, we read the story of “The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum” as a class. We read it in English but repeated all of the nouns in Italian (eg. “Once upon a time there was a girl-ragazza- who lived in a castle- castello- inside the museum- museo”). Many of the words were repeated multiple times, so by the end of the story the children had most of the basic vocabulary nailed down.



After the story, we introduced the parts of the face, using the front cover of the book in a simple “say and repeat” format. When we felt that the children had learned the words, we played a game of “Simon Says” in Italian (“Simone dice”). In this part of the lesson, there was absolutely no English, so the kids had to follow instructions (eg. “Simone dice tocca il tuo naso”- Simon says touch your nose) and remember the vocabulary that they had just learned. They did a great job!

Lastly, we drew self-portraits, with the kids again following our instructions in Italian. The teachers would say “Ora dessiniamo la bocca” (Now we’re going to draw the mouth), and all the kids would draw the mouth on their self-portrait. They managed to remember the vocabulary really well and follow all of the instructions. It’s great to see how much progress they’re making!



Teddy, Jackie and Stacey

Claudie's Class 4/16

Hi again! This week in Italian class we continued to prepare for our visit to the Harvard Sackler Museum. As always we began our lesson with Giro Giro Tondo- the kids all know the words by heart now! Here is a picture of some of them while playing... Next

Next we read a story about a little girl in a museum- The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum by Kate Bernheimer.

While we read the story there were five Italian words that we learned- castello (castle), museo (museum), bambina (girl), musica (music), and sole (sun). Every time those words came up in the story one teacher held up the corresponding image and all the kids said the word in Italian. This was a really fun way to have everyone involved and by the end the kids were doing so well the didn't even need to wait to see the image!

When we go to the real museum we are going to look for something from the little girl because she told the Italian teachers she is going to leave something special for us there! After finishing the book we played Head, Shoulder, Knees, and Toes (Testa, Spalle, Ginocchia, Piedi) again. The kids were impressive in their ability to both say the italian words and sing the song faster and faster each time! Here is a picture during the game...

For parts of the body we learned playing Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes we also learned action verbs that will help us when we go to the museum.

Occhi (eyes)- guardare (look) At the museum we will look at lots of paintings!

Mani (hands)- toccare (touch) At the museum we cannot touch the paintings!

Orecchi (ears)- ascoltare (listen) At the museum we must listen to instructions!

Bocca (mouth)- parlare (talk) At the museum we must speak softly (parlare piano)!

Piedi (feet)- camminare (walk) At the museum we should walk, not run!

Each action verb had a gesture or a motion that we also learned. Then we played a memory game where we, the teachers, would say either the body part or the action verb and then the kids had to say the partner word that we didn't say. This was challenging to begin with but the kids caught on. Afterwards we looked at the self portraits (autoritratti) that the kids drew last week. We went through each one and asked questions about colors, numbers, parts of the body, and family members. The kids did a wonderful job responding in Italian- they have learned so much and are ready to learn more! Finally we played Giro Giro Tondo one last time to close. The thing that impressed me most about this lesson was the amount of italian the kids understood. We had two teachers speaking only in Italian this week and all the questions we asked were only in Italian. The kid understood and were able to respond! This was so amazing! Keep up the good work!

Ciao,

Brennan, Alex, Nick, Alex

Pre-K, Max Came to Class

Dear Parents,
This week, we did another museum simulation, incorporating lots of elements from past weeks like vocabulary (numbers, colors, facial expressions, museum etiquette, etc.) as well as some new words and concepts. We started the class like always -- handing out nametags and forming two lines to get ready for entering the museum. This time when we entered, there were colored dots for them to sit on in order to set up an appropriate viewing space. We reviewed the commands -- "fate silenzio", "non toccare" and "siediti" -- and then brought back the picture of Max so they would recall some of last week's themes. This time, though, we had a surprise: Giancarlo entered the class dressed as Max, in a black suit, a bowtie and nice shoes. A lot of the kids recognized him and called out "Giancarlo!" so we asked him, "Come ti chiami?" and he responded, "Mi chiamo MAX."

From here, we reviewed many of the words which we had introduced last week -- "vestito nero" (black suit), "farfalla" (bow tie), "faccia seria" (serious face), and "faccia felice" (happy face.) This was a good time to introduce some of the other works surrounding Max in the museum, some of the pieces which Max talks to when he gets lonely. Lam walked in dressed as a sculpture made by Rachel Harrison called "I'm with Stupid." We introduced Lam as a friend of Max and did a comparison of the two, but introduced new words like: "carota" (carrot), "scatola" (can), "maschera" (mask), "scarpe" (shoes), "erba" (grass) and "legno" (wood.) We used this time to compare the facial expression of Max with that of Lam, as well as some of the activities each of them might do.

Sitting beside Lam was a letter, which the little girl from the book (The Girl in the Castle inside the Museum) had left. We read the letter to the class which thanked everyone for making self-portraits last week, and asked the students to make new drawings of the pieces this week. The letter was essentially a prompt for the game "I Spy" -- each time we said "Io vedo.....", the kids had to draw the object. We distributed little colored booklets (also a review of color words!) and crayons, and began the game of "I spy" using the objects on Giancarlo and Lam.

The class really enjoyed the drawing activity and many of them were able to identify the objects even though we only stated them in Italian. A lot of them remembered the color words when we went around and asked them what colors they were using, and they were eager to share their drawings with us.

When it was time to go, we got ready by lining up and "faccendo silenzio"....then we exited the museum and collected all the little books. On our actual visit to the museum in May, we will again distribute these sketchbooks to encourage them to creatively respond to the artwork they see. We think it will be really exciting for them to see the actual painting of Max and the sculpture, "I am with Stupid" when they go to the museum, and our hope is that they will recognize and remember many of the words/objects which we introduced.

We can't wait for our final lesson after spring break! We hope you continue to review the words we have introduced -- especially numbers and colors. On our last lesson, we will be giving each student a little bag with all the work they have been doing this semester!

A dopo,
Julia, Giancarlo and Lam

Pre-K Class; Stories and Games

Dear Parents,
A few weeks ago we had a wonderful Italian lesson with Liz's pre-K class! We split the class into two groups and did two fun activities to teach the kids some new words in Italian.

Stories
In one group, we read the kids a book called "The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum." This is an easy-to-read children's book by Kate Bernheimer, and it is beautifully illustrated by Nicoletta Ceccoli (an Italian, no less!). As you can see, not all great Italian art is hundreds of years old.

The book tells the story of a young girl who lives inside a castle which is inside a museum - the girl enjoys the company of museum visitors during the day but gets very lonely at night after the museum closes. We used the book to introduce select Italian vocabulary (such as "castello," meaning castle), as well as to have the children start thinking about what it means to visit a museum and admire beautiful art. In light of our upcoming class trip to the Harvard Sackler Art Museum, we thought this would be a great warm-up exercise for the kids!
Games
In our other group, we focused on Italian vocabulary for various types of fruit. After an initial lesson, we reinforced the new words by playing the familiar children's game "hot potato." But don't worry, we taught the kids more than just the word "potato." The class learned the Italian words for many different types of fruit (such as "mela," which means "apple"). We played the "hot potato" game with various toy fruits - instead of saying "stop," the teacher would call out an Italian fruit ("mela!") and whichever children were holding apples would have to get up and do a funny dance for the rest of the group. The kids had a great time - they're as good at dancing "the funky chicken" as they are at learning Italian!

Overall, a wonderful time was had by children and teachers alike, and we can't wait to come back next week. Feel free to ask your own children which Italian words they remember at home! (But don't blame us if they start dancing "the funky chicken.")
Julia, Giancarlo and Lam

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

Claudie's Class 4/9

Hi! This week in class we pretended to visit the Harvard Sackler Museum to prepare for our actual visit in a few weeks. As always we began with Giro Giro Tondo and then the kids closed there eyes as we pretended the class room turned into an art museum! One of our teachers pretended to be the guard at the museum and he taught us what we could and couldn't do in a museum. Another one of our teachers spoke only in italian and the kids responded very well to this and were able to respond to her in italian as well. I spoke in a mix of italian and english to explain the games and activities. We began with a review of the family members by singing our song about the family...

Siamo una famiglia, tutti qua.

Abraccia la mamma, un bacio a papà.

Il fratello gioca calcio, la sorella balla.

Andiamo da nonno e da nonna!

We were so impressed at how well the kids remembered the song from the previous lesson. We told them we would sing it once to remind them but a lot of them joined in without the reminder! However since we were in a museum we had to speak softly (parlare piano)! Next we looked at a painting we found in our pretend museum of Max

To review colors and numbers we asked the students questions like 'what color is Max's suit?' (che color'è il vestito di Max?) and 'how many eyes does Max have?' (Max ha quanti occhi?). The kids did a wonderful job remembering their colors and numbers in italian!! Next to learn expressions we sang the song 'If you're happy and you know it...' except instead of using the english emotions we substituted the italian word in. We used...

Felice- happy

Triste- sad

Serio- serious

Then we asked how Max looked and felt. Then we sang the song 'head, shoulders, knees, and toes' in italian to learn some parts of the body. The museum guard told us it was okay to play if we did it calmly! The song goes...

Testa, spalle, ginocchia, piedi, ginocchia, piedi

Testa, spalle, ginocchia, piedi, ginocchia, peidi

Occhi, orecchi, bocca, e naso

Testa, spalle, ginocchia, piedi, ginocchia, peidi

After learning this song we learned some action verbs that go along with the parts of the body we just learned. To do this we played Simon Says except the museum guard was close by telling us which actions we could and could not do in the museum! We learned...

Sedersi- to sit

Correre- to run

Urlare- to scream

Parlare piano- to speak softly

Toccare- to touch

Guardare- to look at

Next we asked the students if they knew who made the painting of Max. One students go it exactly right- Max did! It is a self portrait (un autoritratto). The students then made their own autoritratti that we will bring to the real museum when we go! While the kids were walking around we talked to each child individually asking them questions about numbers and colors and they did a good job responding in italian. Finally, we came back into a large group and closed our eyes to leave our pretend museum. Back in the classroom we played Giro Giro Tondo before saying ciao! We can't wait for next week!

A presto,

Brennan, Alex, Nick, and Alex

Claudie's Class 3/26

Hello Again!

It's incredible how much the kids have learned in just a few Italian lessons. Our last lesson was mainly a review, and then we also taught them the diffe

rent members of the family. It was so much fun and we can't wait to go back next time!

As always, we started with "Giro Giro Tondo" and took some time to make sure the kids were pronouncing it all right. At this point they really have it do

wn to perfection! Then, we split up into smaller groups to read the Animal Book that we used last week. We read the book with them and as we went along quizzed them on how many animals were on the page and also which animal. This was a little trickier for them, but some students would help others and overall they did very well with it. Hopefully you all have seen the books that the kids have colored and brought home, but here's a look at one of the pages:

As you can see, there are three lions on this page! Translated, it means "We see 3 yellow lions that look at us." "Yellow lions, yellow lions, what do you see?"

After reading the book, we came back into the bigger group to introduce the members of the family. Using colorful flash cards (which we sent home mini-versions of), we introduced Family (famiglia), Mom (madre/mamma), Dad (padre/papà), Brother (fratello), Sister (sorella), Grandfather (nonno), and Grandmother (nonna). Here's a look at one of the cards:

To reinforce what they learned we wrote a song with actions that went along with it to the tune of "I'm a little teapot." The lyrics are as follows:

Siamo una famiglia, tutti qua.

Abbraccia la mamma, un bacio a papà.

Il fratello gioca calcio, la sorella balla.

Andiamo dal nonno e da nonna!

Translated:

We are a family, all of us here.

Hug mom, give a kiss to dad

Brother plays soccer, sister dances

Let's go to grandpa and grandma's house.

I think the kids were definitely up to the challenge of learning a new song after knowing Giro Giro Tondo so well! Overall it was a great lesson.

A presto,

Alex, Brennan, Nick, and Alex

Alezandra's Kindergarten Class

Hi Parents!

We hope that you have enjoyed seeing all the things that we have sent your children home with these past couple of weeks. Hopefully your children have been practicing the Italian words we've been teaching them every Friday afternoon.

Every week we start and end our lessons with a great song that we have adjusted for the purposes of our lesson. It is a lot of fun to sing with the class and do the movements together. In case you want to be able to sing along with your children here are the lyrics and a translation!

Fai un saluto, fanne un altro,
Fai la giravolta, falla un'altra volta.
Guarda in su, guarda in giù
Dai un abbraccio a chi vuoi tu.

Roughly translated, the song means this:

Give a wave, give another,
Spin in a circle, spin once more.
Look up, look down,
Give a hug to whoever you want.

The children have really enjoyed singing this song and it gets better every week as the children remember more and more lyrics!

Thus far, the students in Alezandra's class have learned how to introduce themselves in Italian and they've learned the colors of the rainbow and some fruits. In addition, the children learned how to count to ten in Italian and also the names of several farm animals. Learning to introduce ourselves in Italian was so much fun! The children really loved learning the phrases and got to design portraits of themselves that they were able to take home. The week that we learned the colors and fruits, the children colored in flashcards so they could practice at home and we also played a really fun game in class. Recently, we applied our knowledge of the numbers when we counted the number of animals on the farm. It was so much fun to learn the names of animals and practice counting in Italian!

For reference, we have included all of the vocabulary your children have learned with us thus far.

Ciao, mi chaimo______. --> Hi, my name is ______.
Come ti chiami? --> What is your name?

Colori - Colors
Rosso - Red
Arancione - Orange
Giallo - Yellow
Verde - Green
Blu - Blue
Viola - Purple

Frutte - Fruits
Fragola - Strawberry
Arancia - Orange
Banana - Banana
Mela - Apple
Mirtillo - Blueberry
Uva - Grape

Numeri - Numbers
Uno - One
Due - Two
Tre - Three
Quattro - Four
Cinque - Five
Sei - Six
Sette - Seven
Otto - Eight
Nove - Nine
Dieci - Ten

Animali - Animals
Gatto - Cat
Cane - Dog
Papera - Duck
Vacca - Cow
Cavalo - Horse
Maiale - Pig
Pollo - Chicken

We hope that this has been helpful and cannot wait to see all of your children again next Friday! We are so excited to keep on teaching Italian and also for our Field Trip to Harvard's Sackler Museum in May!

Sincerely,
Stacey, Jackie, and Teddy

Mamma mia! stasera sono riuscita a scrivere su questo blog...non mi sembra vero! Vi devo dire che speravo di vedere piu` blog specialmente perche` oggi non ci sono state classi alla Graham and Parks e avevate piu` tempo di scrivere o fare qualcosa per il blog. Non vedo neanche i commenti dei genitori. Non vedo 'ora di vedere qualche frase scritta da uno dei genitori... forse dovreste mettere delle fotografie o dei disegni su questo blog! cercare di renderlo un po` piu` interessante! c'maon siete studenti di HARVARD! I migliori del mondo!

Potete fare qualcosa per questo povero blog che vuole un po` di colore e di amore? Voglio vedere un po` di partecipazione vostra in questi giorni. ok?

intanto vi auguro buona pasqua per chi la festeggia e buona domenica a tutti gli altri.

Patrizia

Claudie's Class 3/12

On March 12th we arrived at class to lots of smiling faces saying Ciao which was great to hear! As usual we began class with Giro Giro Tondo and then introduced the new topic for the day- animals! To learn the animals each student got their own animal mask. We then split into small groups to color the animal masks. Each animal had a specific color which corresponded to a book that we wrote for the kids. The book is similar to Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. We had...

Drago Rosso (Red Dragon)

Orso Marrone (Brown Bear)

Leone Giallo (Yellow Lion)

Scimmia Blu (Blue Monkey)

Gatto Arancione (Orange Cat)

Rana Verde (Green Frog)

Maiale Rosa (Pink Pig)

Pecora Viola (Purple Sheep)

Cane Marrone (Brown Dog)

Mucca Nera (Black Cow)

After each student colored their mask we read the story while reviewing vocabulary for colors, numbers, and animals. The students did an excellent job remembering the colors and numbers and were excited to learn the names of the animals, especially the animal that they had the mask for! Each student got their own book to take home and color. After reading the book we got back into the big group and sang Old Mac Donald Had a Farm in Italian- Nella Vecchia Fattoria. After singing the verse "Nella Vecchia Fattoria E I E I O" we, the teachers, would say "ci sono" which means "there are" in Italian and then we would say one of the animals. The kids with that animal mask would come to the center and do an action or make a noise corresponding to their animal and then go sit back down. If you would like to hear this song in italian this is a good link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HywQgnGxRI (it uses slightly different animals than we used and also we only used the verse Nella Vecchia Fattoria E I E I O...). The kids really loved this! Especially getting to act out their animal in the middle of the circle! We are so excited to continue teaching and are looking forward to our next lesson about the members of the family!

Ciao,

Brennan, Alex, Nick, and Alex