Years 3 to 6 Band Description
The nature of the learner, the pathway and particular language
Languages studied in the Second Language Learner Pathway (L2) are typically languages used in spoken form as the language of everyday communication by whole communities across all generations.
The second language learner pathway has been written on the assumption that learning will occur off-Country involving students who are typically not from the language community and have little or no experience of the language and culture. They are introduced to learning the language at school as an additional, new language.
The language chosen for curriculum development should have a sizeable set of resources in a variety of media, such as local documentaries, bilingual narrative and descriptive texts, and educational materials in print and digital form. Learning is enriched and authenticated by interaction with visiting Elders and community speakers, and where possible visits to Country/Place. Information and communications technologies provide additional resources to support a range of language and culture experiences.
The curriculum content and achievement standards in the Second Language Learner Pathway are generalised in order to cater for the range of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander languages that may be learnt as a second language. The content descriptions, content elaborations and achievement standards for the Second Language Learner pathway will need to be adapted for use with the particular language being taught and will need to be modified if the program occurs on-Country or if the learners are from the language community.
At this level, children are developing awareness of their social worlds and of their membership of various groups. They are widening their social networks, experiences and communicative repertoires. They are gaining greater awareness of the world around them. They benefit from various forms of activity-based learning that build on their interests and capabilities, and make connections with other learning areas.
Language learning and use
Learners use formulaic phrases in the target language to participate in classroom routines, presentations and structured conversations with the teaching team, peers, visiting Elders and community speakers. They respond to teacher-generated questions about texts, participate in games, and follow instructions and procedures.
They focus on aspects of their personal worlds and are introduced to content related to the target language Country/Place and the communities where it is spoken.
The development of oral proficiency relies on rich language input. Learners engage in different types of listening and develop active-listening and comprehension skills using contextual, grammatical, phonic and non-verbal cues. They extend their oral fluency by focusing on sentence-level intonation and stress.
They participate in shared and guided reading and learn to apply their knowledge of key words and textual features to predict the meaning of unfamiliar language. Learners use modelled language to create new texts and to extend their language use through expanding and connecting sentences to express more complex ideas and situations. To support their developing knowledge of vocabulary and sentence construction, learners continue to build metalanguage for describing aspects of the target language and how it works.
Contexts of interaction
Learning occurs largely through interaction with peers and the teaching team. Learners may have some access to visiting Elders and community speakers, opportunities to communicate with peers in the target language region using technology, perhaps visit the target language region themselves, or view touring performances or art displays from there.
Texts and resources
Learners engage with a growing range of visual, spoken, written and digital texts, such as photographs, maps, bush calendars, seasonal charts, posters, songs, raps, dances, stories, paintings and visual design accompanying performance, video clips and films.
Level of support
The primary support for learners is the teaching team, which provides instruction, explanation, examples of modelled language use, repetition, reinforcement and feedback on student work. Learning experiences and activities are carefully scaffolded and resourced, with sufficient time allowed for experimentation, drafting and redrafting. Learners need practice and guidance in using resources such as dictionaries, word charts, vocabulary lists and exemplars when translating and creating texts.
The role of languages
Learners use the target language for classroom routines and language learning tasks, for listening to, reading and viewing texts and in interactions with the teaching team, visiting Elders and other community speakers.
The language of response varies according to the nature and demands of the learning experience, with the target language 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.