Learning Italian gives young children a better understanding of their cultural identity and encourages a love for Italy from a very young age. Moreover, recent studies have shown that learning a foreign language enriches a child’s cognitive development which can enhance a child’s overall school performance.
With the passion and drive of our native-speaking teachers, the children learn the language through fun theme-based lessons that combine singing, movement, interactive exercises, and arts & crafts. Learning Italian here at Dante is fun and whilst they enjoy their lessons, almost without knowing, they also learn vocabulary pronunciation and basic grammar skills. This in turn gives them the confidence to speak in Italian even outside the classroom.

The enrolment fee for all children’s courses is $140 per term ($120 for 2 or more children in the same family) and each course includes 9 lessons of 1,5 hours per term. Newly enrolled students are expected to purchase a textbook which is used throughout the year, both in class and at home to complete assigned homework. Please choose the course which best suits your child’s needs and interests among the options below:

Consolidation Course, Saturday 8.30am-10.00am

This level is aimed at children who habitually interact with family and their wider community in Italian, but do not experience formal schooling in Italian. It is pitched at levels A1 and A2 of the European Languages Framework.

In this course children learn how to read fluently and with intonation in Italian, how to write longer texts in Italian, to retell fictional stories and non-fictional facts, ho to divide words in syllables and identify the difficult sounds of the Italian language. Children also explore conjugating verbs, including modal verbs and irregular verbs and learn common idiomatic expressions.

The children in this course use the textbook ‘Forte!’ which is available for purchase at the school office. ‘Forte!2’ is advised to children at A1 level, while ‘Forte!3′ is suggested to the children at A2 level. The price of each book is $45

Introductory course, Tuesday 4.30pm-6.00pm, Saturday 10.15am-11.45am

This level is aimed at children who learn and use Italian as a Second Language to connect to their heritage and communicate with Italian relatives and friends. Students in this course learn the sounds of the Italian language, including how to read and write them as well as how to read aloud and independently, developing text comprehension and building short sentences to express opinions, preferences and responses to simple texts.

Children are not required to prove any prior knowledge of Italian for this beginner course.

The children in this course use the textbook ‘Raccontami’ – level 1 or 2 depending on their language proficiency level – and the textbook is available for purchase at the school office. The price of each book is $35

The Enrolment form can be downloaded here