Foundation to Year 2 Band Description
The nature of the learners
Children enter the early years of schooling with established oracy skills in one or more languages and varying degrees of early literacy capability. For young students, learning typically focuses on their immediate world of family, home, school, friends and neighbourhood. They are learning how to socialise with new people, share with others, and participate in structured routines and activities at school. Typically they have little to no experience of Indonesian language and culture.
Indonesian language learning and use
In these years there is an emphasis on developing learners’ oral language to enable them to participate in class activities such as shared reading, chants, rhymes, songs and games. They repeat sounds, particularly of vowels, the letter c (ch) and r (trilled), as modelled by the teacher and aural texts. Learners use formulaic language and single-idea phrases. They will recognise the same alphabet as they are learning for writing English and need to observe that some letters have different sounds (for example, c = ch). Learners write by tracing and copying, forming letters legibly. They learn to write words and sentences independently using modelled language, for example, matching pictures with single words, labels and captions.
Contexts of interaction
The primary context for interaction is the language classroom, with the teacher of Indonesian, and peers or buddy classmates. Learners’ use of Indonesian primarily relates to classroom routines and activities, drawing on their curiosity about the world around them and their interest in play, movement and games.
Texts and resources
Written texts include children’s stories and big books, and teacher-generated materials such as pictures with labels and descriptions. Learners listen to, read and view texts, including digital forms such as videos, songs and children’s programs. They respond to teacher generated resources such as cloze, substitution or matching exercises, and produce texts such as captions and recounts using formulaic language, for example, Pada hari…, saya…
Features of Indonesian language use
Students are learning the sounds and written form of Indonesian. They are noticing similarities and differences between Indonesian and English, such as similar vocabulary and word order and differences in the position of adjectives and possessive pronouns Learners ask questions in English about Indonesia and Indonesians. With teacher support, they discuss language and culture in terms of what is the same or different and compare with ‘what is said and done’ in their own language and culture.
Level of support
Support is provided through visual and tactile materials, such as pictures, realia, objects and charts, and the use of gesture and movement. The main source of support is the teacher’s talk, such as questions and statements, explanations, prompts, recycling of language, stories and feedback. Learners rely on modelled language and scaffolded tasks to create their own texts, for example, choosing words to complete sentences or using pictures to sequence captions.
The role of English
Indonesian is used in class interactions and daily routines such as opening and closing of lessons. Indonesian is used by the teacher to model new language, process texts and guide interaction, for example, Ini siapa?, Di mana Hasan? English is used when describing aspects of language and culture such as word order and cultural practices.
