Modern Foreign Languages (Spanish)

“You live a new life for every language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only once.” A proverb (Eastern European)

INTENT

At St Francis, our languages curriculum aims to foster a love of other cultures and languages . We are committed to ensuring that competence in another language other than English, enables our children to interpret and exchange meaning within and across other cultures. Through MFL, we aim for our children to build confidence in communication in Spanish. The teaching of Spanish in KS2 provides an appropriate balance of spoken and written language and lays the foundation for further foreign language learning in KS3.

IMPLEMENTATION

We teach Spanish across Key Stage 2.   Based on the National Curriculum and inspired by the work of 'Babelzone', we have developed our own scheme of work in Spanish.  This focuses on the declarative and procedural knowledge required to progress in the discipline as well as outlines progressive vocabulary that is acquired.  

We use a variety of the following techniques to encourage children to have an active engagement with Spanish:

• Games – in order to develop vocabulary through repetition, reading, writing, speaking and listening skills.
• Role-play – these relate to the situations the children may find themselves in the future.
• Action songs and rhymes – to develop phonetic skills, memory skills and to further vocabulary.
• We build children’s confidence through praise for any contribution they make in the foreign language.

IMPACT

Our Spanish curriculum ensures that all pupils develop key language learning skills set out by the National Curriculum, as well as a love of languages and learning about other cultures.  Learning an additional language offers our pupils the opportunity to explore relationships between language and identity, develop a deeper understanding of other cultures and the world around them with a better awareness of self, others and cultural differences. It is hoped that children will foster a love of language and a desire to further learning beyond the classroom and in their future.