MFL - Spanish
Subject Leader - Mr Savage
Intent
“Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality languages education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world” (National Curriculum 2014 programme of study for Languages).
The 2014 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.
At Banks Road Primary School, we are committed to ensuring that all KS2 children have an opportunity to learn a Modern Foreign Language. Learning a secondary language enables children to interpret, create and exchange meaning within and across cultures. It also provides excitement, enjoyment and challenge for children, helping to create enthusiastic learners and to develop positive attitudes to language learning throughout life. The teaching of Spanish in KS2 provides an appropriate balance of spoken and written language and lays the foundations for further foreign language teaching at KS3.
Implementation
Children are introduced to Spanish from Year 3 and receive a weekly 30-minute lesson, delivered by a specialist teacher, throughout their time in KS2. Class teachers provide pupils with short, regular opportunities to reinforce lesson content between sessions. This enables the children to develop early language acquisition skills that facilitate their understanding of the patterns of language and how these compare to the English language.
- Each unit of study builds gradually with pupils developing their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills incrementally to achieve the end of unit goals. Longer term, these end of unit goals are part of the clearly defined steps which build towards the end of key stage objectives.
- Children are taught to listen attentively to spoken language and respond, joining in with songs, rhymes and games.
- Pupils move from rehearsed answers to combining vocabulary and grammar to communicate their own messages.
- There are frequent opportunities built in to planning for pupils to revise and revisit previously learned language so that they can recall it and apply it in other contexts.
- A variety of colourful, relevant and high-quality physical and digital resources is used to aid with motivation and memorisation.
- Our specialist language teacher has an almost exclusive use of the foreign language during lessons. Pupils are immersed in appropriate target language as much as possible, with English used as necessary to ensure comprehension.
- Opportunities are provided in each lesson for pupils to use and practise what they have learned.
- Language games are planned into lessons to enhance motivation, contextualise learning and heighten enjoyment
- Children are taught to listen attentively to spoken language and respond, through songs and rhymes and stories.
- There is a strong focus on grammatical structures and phonology.
- Children have plenty of opportunities to practise their spoken language during paired-work and group discussion.
- Use of authentic materials
- Use of ICT where relevant and appropriate – for example commercially produced software, teacher produced resources, internet research and use of the interactive whiteboard.
- Children produce one piece of writing each half term, to reinforce learning.
Impact
At Banks Road, all pupils work towards achieving specific outcomes by the end of the year. Assessment opportunities are identified and clearly marked in the weekly plans and cover all 4 skills. Teaching is adjusted to ensure gaps in key knowledge are addressed before moving onto new content. Progress towards these outcomes is monitored throughout the year by the class teacher, with the help of the language specialist.
Our MFL curriculum ensures that children develop their knowledge of where different languages, including the range of home languages spoken by the families of the school, as well as Spanish, are spoken in the world. Varied learning experiences, also ensure that languages are celebrated throughout the school community, whilst providing a context for language learning and developing the children’s understanding of different cultures. This ties in with other curriculum areas including PHSCE, RE, History and Geography. Parents receive assessment information regarding MFL in yearly reports.
At Banks Road Primary School, the children are assessed continually throughout the year, with the teacher giving feedback through marking and verbal feedback. Assessment is based on class observations of listening and speaking activities, written evidence in (work) books and self-assessment by the child after each unit of work when they have the opportunity evaluate their performance.
The pupils work towards achieving specific outcomes by the end of the year. Progress towards these outcomes is monitored throughout the year by the class teacher with the help of the language specialist. The class teachers assess the progress of each pupil through the stepped levels to end of KS2 attainment targets set out in the Programme of Study for Languages. By the end of each year, the stages which have been achieved for each attainment target will have been recorded on a monitoring sheet.