Primary Indonesian B: A Visit to a Balinese House Compound.

         Grade 4 has just finished their second unit of inquiry under the theme “How the World Works” with the central idea “The design of buildings and structures is dependent upon environmental factors, human ingenuity and available materials”.

In Language B Indonesian, we looked at the design of a Balinese house in terms of colour, shape, the material used and the influence of Balinese culture. As part of the ‘tuning in’ process, students did some brainstorming while they looked at pictures of Balinese houses. The vocabulary related to this topic was practiced using flashcards, board games and from online resources. We read simple texts about Balinese houses, and we used the information from the texts to develop our understanding. We also had the opportunity to visit one of the Balinese houses in our community to get a better idea of what a compound building looks like.

         We used a Venn diagram to compare our own houses with Balinese houses in terms of the design of the buildings, the material used and the culture behind the building. Then, we used this information to write ashort, descriptive paragraph. All students were risk-takers and showed their confidence when sharing their paragraphs with the rest ofthe class.