Years 5 and 6 Band Description
The nature of the learners
Students are expanding their social networks, experiences and communication repertoire in both their first language and Indonesian. They continue to need guidance and participate in structured, collaborative tasks that both recycle and extend language. Students are gaining greater independence and becoming more conscious of their peers and social context. They are gaining awareness of the world around them and the proximity of Indonesia to Australia. Learners are noticing similarities and differences between Indonesian language and culture and their own.
Indonesian language learning and use
Learners use formulaic phrases in Indonesian to participate in classroom routines, presentations and structured conversations with the teacher and peers. They focus on aspects of their personal world and are introduced to content related to Indonesia and other learning areas. Learners develop oral language through scaffolded tasks and texts such as songs, descriptions and stories. They extend their oral fluency by focusing on sentence-level intonation and stress.
In pairs and as a class, learners read texts such as signs, posters, scripts, lyrics and instructions (for example, for recipes or games). They are learning to apply their knowledge of key words and textual features to predict the meaning of unfamiliar language. Learners use modelled language to create texts such as a class story, script or contribution to a wiki space. They require opportunities to extend their language use by expressing ideas through expanding and connecting sentences.
Contexts of interaction
Learners use Indonesian to interact with the teacher and classmates, and may use technology to communicate with peers in Indonesia. Tasks are typically structured, collaborative and at times competitive, such as a group performance, class display or games. Learners may notice use of Indonesian in the community, such as in the media.
Texts and resources
Learners engage with a range of published texts such as readers, songs and computer games, as well as those prepared by the teacher of Indonesian, including language exercises, games and presentations. In addition, learners gain exposure to Indonesian language and culture through texts created for the Indonesian community, such as websites, music clips and television programs.
Features of Indonesian language use
Learners are expanding their knowledge of vocabulary and sentence construction. They develop a range of ber- verbs, simple conjunctions and prepositions, noticing that sentences follow a similar word order to English, apart from possessive pronouns and adjectives. They need to develop a metalanguage for describing aspects of Indonesian language and how it works. They are increasingly aware of the connection between language and cultural practices (for example, tawar-menawar, selamatan) and compare such connections to their own language and culture.
Level of support
Supports provided by the teacher at this level include explicit instruction, description, and comparison of Indonesian and English, modelled language use and examples of texts, and feedback on student work. Learners need practice and guidance in using dictionaries and access to word charts, vocabulary lists and examples when translating and creating texts.
The role of English
Indonesian is used for classroom routines and language learning tasks and may be used as the language of instruction for learning the content of other learning areas. The language of response varies according to task demands, with Indonesian used primarily for communicating in structured and supported tasks, and English (and other known languages) used for open-ended, comparative tasks that develop learners’ understanding of language and culture.