Auslan – Years 3 and 4
Learning Objectives
In Years 3 and 4, Auslan learning builds on each student’s prior learning and experiences with language. Students continue to communicate and work collaboratively through purposeful and creative play in structured activities involving signing and viewing. They use Auslan to interact with teachers and peers, and plan activities in familiar settings that reflect their interests and capabilities. They may also bring their experience of interacting in Auslan within their family and/or the Deaf community to the classroom. In informal settings, they use local and digital resources to explore Auslan and other signing communities. They continue to receive extensive support through modelling, scaffolding, repetition and the use of targeted resources.
Students develop signing skills and use gestures, words and modelled expressions, imitating the movement, location and handshape of signs. They use their literacy capabilities in Auslan and/or English to recognise some similarities and differences between Auslan and English. They locate information, respond to, and create informative and imaginative texts. They access authentic and purpose-developed Auslan texts such as picture books, stories, digital and animated games, timetables, recipes and advertisements. They recognise that language and culture reflect practices and behaviours.
Achievement Standard
By the end of Year 4, students use Auslan to initiate structured interactions to share information related to the classroom and their personal worlds. They participate in activities that involve planning and transacting. They locate and respond to key items of information in texts, using strategies to help interpret and convey meaning in familiar contexts. They use familiar and formulaic language and basic syntax, including fingerspelling (FS), lexical signs, depicting signs (DSs), non-manual features (NMFs) and signing space, to create texts appropriate to context.
Students use combinations of signs and demonstrate understanding that Auslan has language conventions and rules to create and make meaning. They identify patterns in Auslan and make comparisons between Auslan and English. They understand that Auslan is connected with cultural identity, and identify how this is reflected in their own language(s), culture(s) and identity.