Holistic Approach To Language Learning For Kids

• Home
• Comenius
• Coordinator
• Project Partners
• Experts
• Meetings
• Outcomes
• Secret Garden
• Contact

IT, Palermo, Alcide De Gasperi Primary School

Contact

The De Gasperi primary school is located in a residential area in Palermo. There are 39 classes: 30 classes of primary school and 9 of Infant school with about 950 pupils aged from 3 to 11. The staff is made of 86 teachers, included specialized teachers for pupils with special needs and teachers of English. The De Gasperi school focuses on multilingual and intercultural education. Pupils start learning English in the Infant school through an experimental, multisensorial approach, based on storytelling formats.

In Primary education there is a National Curriculum that includes the study of English in all the classes and a local, optional one. In the local curriculum a second foreign language (French, Spanish or German according to the choice of the family) is offered to pupils from the third to the fifth class. CLIL has started to be experimented in some 4th and 5th classes.

As the De Gasperi school has matured an expertise in foreign language teaching, it will contribute in preparing materials as well as in experimenting them in the classes and from there deriving guidelines for language teachers of primary education. It will also contribute in providing feedback in order to recalibrate objectives, contents and materials. They will most of a work bottom-up: from practice to theory in order to fine-tune the ‘theoretical’ description of the approach: what works in the classroom and why.

They will take an active role in selecting contexts for recording and in training their teachers to open up their classroom to the camera.

Maria Giovanna Granata is the head teacher. She is a former teacher of English in Primary school and teacher trainer in glottodidactic. She is also a member of regional foreign language groups. She has participated in several training courses about different approaches to teaching a foreign language. She has coordinated a school network in experimenting a new method to teach English to very young children as well as several training courses for teachers of English.

TizianaVenturella is a language teacher at De Gasperi. She is specialised in Psychomotricity. She teaches to children with special needs in primary school. She is also a teacher trainer at University as expert in the "integrated use of languages". She coordinates intercultural projects. Publication : " An educational proposal to enhance communicative skills: dramatizing" (1994)