A TOUCH of Venice is coming to Newbery Park Primary School as students celebrate Italian culture with an Italian-themed Carnevale festival.
Students have been busy preparing their masks and strengthening their language skills ahead of the November 30 event.
The colourful, day-long event will showcase work completed by students in Italian this year.
Attendees will have an opportunity to enjoy traditional Italian food and participate in games typically played by children in Italy during Carnevale.
Newbery Park Primary School principal Stuart Millar said the Carnevale event aimed to consolidate students’ language learning.
“The day is a way to pull all of the learning together and it is probably quite fitting because the Carnevale is very much an Italian celebration,” he said.
“For us at Newbery Park, it is translating the day to a celebration of learning as part of our languages program.”
Mr Millar said the school’s language other than English program had been “highly successful”, with educators seeing great results.
“It has been interesting because there has been a lot of research around how learning a language other than English supports the development of other curriculum areas,” he said.
“Over the last two years, the student have taken to the language of Italian and it supports the development of other spoken languages.
“It is a good partnership to have with the high school because they are able to continue the language when they transfer across to high school.”
Junior primary student Beau Higgins said he had enjoyed learning a different language.
“My favourite thing was learning a song in Italian and learning how to say numbers and months,” he said.
“We talked about the different regions in Italy.
“It was good to learn about what Italians eat and drink for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
Year 7 student Jett Bowering said he was likely to continue learning Italian next year at Millicent High School.
“I’ll probably keep on doing it, it’s good to know another language,” he said.
“Our class has been having conversations in Italian.
“We have to talk to someone in Italian and they have to respond in English.
“We have to speak for no less than 30 seconds and up to two minutes.”
