Intent
Languages are at the centre of our school due so many different languages being spoken by our children. Our school follows the Primary Languages Network KS2 curriculum and scheme of work for Spanish. At Elmwood Junior School we believe that the learning of a language provides a valuable educational, social and cultural experience for our pupils. It helps them to develop communication skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing, with an aim of making substantial progress in one language. In addition, children’s knowledge of how language works will be developed to lay the foundations for further language learning in future. We believe that learning another language gives children a new and broader perspective on the world, encouraging them to understand their own cultures and those of others, which feeds into our whole school ethos where many religions and cultures are represented.
Implementation
Spanish is taught throughout the school by a specialist language tutor to ensure good progression and skills development across the key stage. Class teachers are encouraged to reinforce Spanish learning beyond Spanish lessons to consolidate new understanding and skills, for example through classroom routines, cross curricular lessons, festivals and the annual languages day which enables pupils to celebrate a variety of languages. Also Languages learning naturally provides links to the geography curriculum and connects strongly with English and History.
Although Languages is a cross-curricular subject, children are taught specific skills, concepts and vocabulary in a weekly dedicated Spanish lesson of 30 minutes per week. The subject leader liaises with the specialist tutor to create long term plans that meet the requirements of the revised national curriculum and monitor teaching and learning in the subject.
A variety of fun activities are planned for, catering for different learning styles including games, singing songs, discussions, role-play as well as opportunities for listening, speaking, reading and writing to extend, embed and combine language skills.
Impact
Our Spanish curriculum will ensure all pupils develop key language learning skills in order to make substantial progress in one language, as set out by the national curriculum, as well as a love of languages and learning about other cultures. These are as follows:
- understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources
- 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
- 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
We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:
- Questioning and oral feedback.
- Watching children as they work
- Listening to children (as they speak to their peers, ask and answer questions, engage in role plays and songs etc.)
- Discussing and reviewing children’s work with them
- Marking children’s work
- Asking children to assess their work or the work of their peers