Intent

At Honilands Primary School, we aim to provide high-quality language education that fosters children’s curiosity and deepens their understanding of the world. All pupils will be expected to achieve their full potential by encouraging high expectations and excellent standards in their foreign language learning. It helps them to develop communication skills, including the core skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. The children’s knowledge of how language works, phonology and elements of grammar will be developed and extended. Lessons will enable pupils to make substantial progress in one language. The transferable language-learning skills gained will support and lay the foundation for further language learning. It will provide pupils with the confidence and independence to explore and attempt to manipulate the structure of language. Learning another language gives children a new and broader perspective on the world, encouraging them to understand their own cultures and those of others. We aim to provide an appropriate balance of spoken and written language that will lay the foundation for further foreign language teaching at KS3. 

 

The 2013 National Curriculum for Modern Foreign Languages aims to ensure that all children: 

• Understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources
• Are able to speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and that they are continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation
• Can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt
• Discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied

Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures (National Curriculum 2013).

Implementation

During the Foundation Stage

Pupils are gently introduced to some spoken Spanish vocabulary. This is done through the use of spoken Spanish in the classroom, including using Spanish to express praise and complete the register.  

During Key Stage 1

Pupils are gently introduced to some spoken Spanish vocabulary. This is done through spoken Spanish in the classroom, including using Spanish to express praise, completing the register, and referring to familiar objects. This enables children to develop early language acquisition skills that support their understanding of language patterns and how they differ from or resemble English. 

During Key Stage 2 

Pupils have 45-60 minutes of timetabled Spanish lessons per week. Lessons across KS2 that support the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, as well as an appreciation of Spanish Culture.

 
Children are taught to listen attentively to spoken language and respond by joining in with mini-quizzes and accessible questions. By the end of Key Stage Two, they can read and write confidently in basic Spanish.

Pupils are introduced to a variety of Spanish-language topics, including stories, poems, songs, and rhymes. These are delivered consistently through the curriculum content, enabling the pupils to understand similarities and differences between Spanish cultures and their own. It also gives pupils a real sense of usefulness and appreciation of the language as cultural capital for their future, given the current prominence of the Spanish language and culture worldwide.

Planning & Teaching

Our school follows the Primary Languages Network scheme of work (Click2Teach/Video2Teach). It is a live scheme that is continually updated and revised to meet current curriculum standards. It holds, at its core, the Intent, Implementation, and Impact of MFL whilst maintaining a ‘primary’ focus. Alongside the planning provided, the scheme is supported by accompanying videos, PowerPoint slides, audio files (spoken by native speakers), links to authentic literature, songs, games, cultural references, seasonal events, and cross-curricular links. The children in KS2 build up their knowledge and skills by working through the language learning stages.

• Knowledge and skills in Spanish are progressive from one year to the next and are mapped across the school, in line with our scheme of work. Cross-curricular links are considered, and the school’s own context is considered as part of curriculum planning, including, for example, a History Unit with strong resources in Spanish in the last term of Y5
• Through KS2, pupils will learn about the main traits of chosen Spanish-speaking countries (Spain, Perú, Argentina, and México) in order to better appreciate the language of study.
• Pupils also learn some Maths, Geography, Gastronomy, and General Culture in some Spanish lessons to enhance and enrich their Spanish learning.
• The school’s curriculum maps show the units to be covered each term, which over each key stage, will include the following main themes: Y3: All about me; At school; Portraits; Y4: All about me II; The planet Earth; At school II; Y5: The time; Holidays; Food and drink; Y6: My home; My hobbies; KS2 Final Revisions
• Planning is annotated and adapted to support children with SEND, lower-attaining, and those new to English, improving access to the content. 
• More able children are planned to deepen their knowledge and skills.
• To promote active language learning, a range of teaching methods is implemented to ensure that children develop their linguistic skills through listening, speaking, reading, and writing to be secondary-ready.
• Activities can consist of actions, rhymes, stories, song, drama, grammar focus, video clips, air writing, sentence structure, dictionary work, book making, and many more creative ways to extend, embed and combine language skills.
• Written work is kept in workbooks, although formal writing is not the outcome of every lesson. The skill of writing is developed through the use of whiteboards and air writing, leading to writing in books.

Impact

Feedback

• Oral feedback is to be used to improve pupils' work throughout each lesson.
• Children may use a purple pen to signify responses to feedback.
• ‘Edit and Review’ to check spelling errors and other secretarial errors at the end of each lesson.

Assessment 

• Mini ‘quizzes’ take place regularly to ensure content is being learnt
• Short recaps of prior knowledge/ learning in each lesson to ensure the children have secure knowledge and understanding
• End-of-unit quizzes are used to assess learning and identify gaps to inform future planning.
• The teacher observes pupils’ development in this subject and uses the school Tracking Grid to assess their attainment.