The Lesson in Detail! EDIT

Good morning!

Ok, the lesson from yesterday… {I am writing this in detail so I will remember exactly what happened}

I got there about 20 minutes before the time the lesson was due to start which worked well. The students were at lunch and I had time to talk to the teacher. To my surprise {and pleasure} the students were 4th graders rather than 3rd graders as I had been told. The older kids are, the more I like them! Another great thing was that their desks were in groups rather than in rows which pleased me.

Mrs. M asked if she should introduce me or would I prefer to do it myself. I told her I would prefer to do it myself since I wanted to use the difference between Patricia and Patrizia as a lead-in to giving them their cards. These cards had their names in English on one side and their names in Italian on the other. Some names had no direct equivalent so in that case I looked for what their name meant and found an Italian name that meant the same. As I gave these out, I pronounced the Italian for them and had them repeat it. Then I said, "You can tell me what you want me to call you by putting your card with your choice facing to me like this." and I put my card with Patrizia facing them. Much to my surprise, and pleasure, 17 out of the 18 chose the Italian name. The one girl who didn’t later raised her hand to inform me that she had turned her card around!

Next I talked briefly about the phrase they were going to learn [Mi chiamo…} and wrote it on the board. I then put the phonetic pronunciation up for them and we sounded it out. I was delighted that they learned it so quickly. Next, I told them I was going to ask them a question and put it on the board . It was "Come ti chiama?" Before I could say anything, Cristofero said thoughtfully, " It has something to do with name because it has chiama…"    EDIT: At this point I should explain that "chiama" is NOT Italian for "name". What the question is saying literally is "What do you call yourself?" However, what Cristofero was doing was making an intelligent {albeit incorrect} guess which is what I was wanting the class to do!  I was delighted! I love it when a student anticipates  what I am going to point out. So I turned to him and asked,  "Come ti chiama?" Then I asked him and the whole class if they could figure out what question I had just asked Cristofero. And he got it that I had asked him "What is your name!" Next I put the phonetic pronunciation on the board and the whole class practiced saying it.

Next step was to use what they had learned. There was one little girl sitting alone because Tomaso who usually sat there was absent so I told the class that she and I were going to model what they were going to do. I sat down by her and asked her in Italian what her name was. She answered in italian and then she asked me and I answered. Then she moved to another group and they practiced doing this for about 10 minutes or so.

After all this was done, I asked them to get out pencils and turn their cards over. I told them they were going to write all this down so they could go home this evening and practice on their parents and brothers and sisters. So, I wrote on the board "My name is… " followed by "Mi chiamo" and then the pronunciation /me key-AH- mo/. We did the same with "What is your name …"

And finally, I told them what a great time I had had and how much I had enjoyed myself. I gave them the word "Grazie" when I said thank you and when they said it back to me, I said "Prego!" and told them what it means {You’re welcome!" } As I wrote these on the board, I was pleased to see everyone of them writing them on their cards! Finally, on the way out, I waved and said, "Ciao!" and they did the same to me!

Their teacher had taken pictures with my camera and when I looked at them, I was a bit disappointed. This is a camera with a 12 zoom  which means you can get right up in a person’s face and they don’t know. I would have loved some closeups but she gave me group shots. Oh, well, I will work with what I have when I do my follow-up report.Finally, I am going to send them a big  self-addressed and stamped envelope and ask them to answer a small  questionaire and send it back to me to use as part of my follow-up report…