South Africa Grade 2 School Syllabus - Afrikaans (First Additional Language)

This course is designed to build upon the learner's existing home language foundation and develop their Afrikaans proficiency through an additive bilingualism approach. The curriculum focuses on developing listening and speaking skills, reading and phonics, and writing and handwriting. It emphasizes learning through context and active participation. The content is organized by term, with suggested themes to facilitate vocabulary and language structure recycling. Teachers are encouraged to adapt the themes and activities to their specific context and available resources.

Listening and Speaking

• Daily Activities: Learners engage in activities such as responding to greetings and farewells, making simple requests, following short sequences of instructions, giving simple instructions, identifying objects from oral descriptions, and talking about pictures. They also memorize and perform simple poems, action rhymes, and songs, and participate in language games.
• Focused Activities: Learners listen to stories and recounts told or read by the teacher, answer simple literal questions, act out stories using dialogue, and retell stories with assistance. They also engage with non-fiction texts, answering comprehension questions and providing simple summaries with the teacher's help.

Reading and Phonics

• Phonemic Awareness and Phonics: Learners develop phonemic awareness through rhymes and songs, distinguish between confusing sounds, and identify letter-sound relationships, including those that differ from their home language. They build and break down words, recognize common endings and consonant digraphs, and group words into families.
• Shared Reading: Learners read enlarged texts with the teacher, using pictures to develop vocabulary and answering comprehension questions.
• Group Guided Reading: Learners read aloud in small groups with the teacher, using reading strategies learned in their home language.
• Paired/Independent Reading: Learners practice reading independently or with a partner, using texts from Guided Reading sessions and the classroom reading corner. They are encouraged to use picture dictionaries.

Writing and Handwriting

• Writing Activities: Learners use handwriting skills learned in their home language to write lists with headings, captions for pictures, sentences using frames and dictated words, and simple texts like birthday cards. They also complete sentences, put jumbled sentences in order, write short paragraphs on familiar topics, and organize information graphically. With guidance, they write personal recounts and simple sets of instructions. Shared writing activities are also incorporated.
• Language Structure and Use: Learners develop their understanding and use of language structures through context. They learn to use simple present, past, and future tenses, countable and uncountable nouns, articles, possessive forms, time connectors, question forms, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and the verb "to be." They are encouraged to build word banks and personal dictionaries.