Modern Foreign Languages at Little Digmoor Primary School
We believe that learning a language enriches the curriculum at Little Digmoor Primary School. It provides excitement, enjoyment and challenge for children and teachers, helping to create enthusiastic learners and to develop positive attitudes to language learning throughout life. The natural links between languages and other areas of the curriculum can enhance the overall teaching and learning experience. The skills, knowledge and understanding gained make a major contribution to the development of children's oracy and literacy and to their understanding of their own culture/s and those of others. Language also lies at the heart of ideas about individual identity and community, and learning another language can do a great deal to shape children's ideas in this critical area as well as giving them a new perspective on their own language.
In particular, language learning:
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stimulates children's creativity
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leads to gains across the curriculum
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supports oracy and literacy
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supports and celebrates the international dimension
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liberates children from insularity and fosters pupils’ curiosity and deepens their understanding of the world.
Intent
Aims – pupils should be able to
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understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources
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speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation
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write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt
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discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.
The curriculum provides an appropriate balance of spoken and written language and lays the foundations for further foreign language teaching at Key Stage 3. It enables pupils to understand and communicate ideas, facts and feelings in speech and writing, focused on familiar and routine matters, using their knowledge of phonology, grammatical structures and vocabulary.
Implementation
Children are introduced to Spanish in Year 3. They are gently introduced to some spoken Spanish vocabulary. This is done through the use of spoken Spanish in the lessons, which includes the use of Spanish to: name body parts, introduce themselves, name foods, name school items, name family members and tell the time. This enables the children to develop early language acquisition skills that facilitate their understanding of the patterns of language and how these differ from, or are similar to, English. In KS2, each class has a weekly/fortnightly timetabled Spanish lesson.
Lessons across the Key Stages support the skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing:
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Children are taught to listen attentively to spoken language and respond, joining in with songs, rhymes and games.
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Children develop an appreciation of a variety of stories, songs, poems and rhymes in Spanish that are delivered through the curriculum content.
Knowledge and skills in Spanish are progressive and are mapped across the school, in line with our scheme of work.
Impact
Through the first teaching of Modern Foreign Languages taking place, we will see the impact of the subject in different ways:
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Children will be provided with opportunities to communicate with each other in Spanish.
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Children will become aware that language has structure, and that the structure differs from one language to another.
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Children will develop their language through development of the four key skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing.
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Children will enrich their language learning by developing an understanding of the Spanish culture.
Unit assessments are used to record the progress that pupils are making in terms of knowing more, remembering more and being able to do more at the end of each academic year. This will record whether the children are working towards the age-related expectations, at the age-related expectations or exceeding the age-related expectations.
Why Spanish?
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Spanish is the 2nd most spoken language on Earth, ahead of English and behind Mandarin.
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It is the official language of 31 countries, It is spoken by around 414 million people, which is just under 1/5 of the Earth's population.
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Spanish is also the 3rd most used language online behind English and Mandarin
What is Twinkl?
Twinkl is the scheme of work we use to plan and deliver exciting Spanish lessons.
Twinkl's KS2 Spanish teaching resources are designed to teach children some functional vocabulary and phrases in a fun and engaging way. Through a variety of stimuli to engage auditory, visual and tactile learners, the learners find themselves engaging with some impressive Spanish vocabulary, basic grammar rules and even conversational language.