Italian gestures are very important in teaching and learning Italian as a second language. Well-known Italian books for foreigners of different levels and publishing houses propose traditional teaching materials based on pictures and images to explain typical Italian gestures. Nevertheless, international and national studies have demonstrated the importance of Italian gestures for travelling, living and communicating in Italy. For this reason, in this article I will focus on how Italian gestures can be taught with innovative forms (i.e. video or movie) and how this process activates the speaker’s productive and receptive competence and improve his performance. However, I will specify the rule of communicative contexts and linguistic registers and I will propose a review of Italian gestures classification based on Common European Framework of Reference for Languages levels.