Spanish

Spanish

Intent:

At Radford Semele, we aim to offer a coherently planned sequence of lessons, ensuring progressive coverage of the skills required by the national curriculum. Our chosen themes - Our Past, Let's Explore a Spanish Town and Discovering Spain - provide an introduction to the culture of Spanish-speaking countries and communities. The engaging units selected strive to foster children’s curiosity and help deepen their understanding of the world whilst gradually building on their linguistic skills. Children are also encouraged to express their ideas and thoughts in Spanish, providing opportunities for them to interact and communicate with others for practical purposes both in speech and in writing. Frequent opportunities to listen to native speakers enhances children’s understanding and accuracy of their language development and pronunciation. The intent in Lower KS2 is that children acquire basic skills and understanding in Spanish with a strong emphasis placed on developing their Speaking and Listening ability. These will be further developed in Upper KS2 alongside Reading and Writing skills, gradually progressing to more complex language concepts and greater learner autonomy.

Implementation:

We have chosen to teach Spanish as part of our exciting weekly Masterclass sessions. Our key intent for this subject is for all children to develop an appreciation and interest in learning other languages in a stimulating and enjoyable way. Beginning in Year 3, children are able to develop a love of languages through a dynamic approach to learning as they explore all four of the curriculum strands; reading, writing, speaking and listening. Spanish is implemented in a fun and active way as children learn through mimes, fun games, songs and role play activities to support pupil engagement and memory retention. Children build on their Spanish learning by following a sequential curriculum which covers units ‘Meet and Greet’ and ‘My Body’ in Year 3, 'The People Around Me' and 'Tell Me When' in Year 4, ‘All About School’ and ‘My Town’ in Year 5 and 'The Way We Look' and 'My World' in Year 6. Through this approach to learning, we strive to provide a consistent means of helping children remember the content they have been taught and to integrate new ideas and knowledge into a real-life context. Children progressively acquire, use and apply a growing bank of vocabulary organised around these carefully selected topics.

Impact:

Monitoring throughout the 2022-2023 academic year showed that using a full range of resources and adopting a fun, multi-sensory approach to languages has increased pupil engagement. Furthermore, impact is also measured through key questioning skills built into lessons, child-led assessment such as success criteria grids and summative assessments aimed at targeting next steps in learning and to inform future planning. Children are also assessed on the two units they have been taught through Target Tracker which is used twice per school year to monitor progress and attainment throughout Year 3-6. Additionally, the monitoring of lessons and regular pupil voice enquiries are invaluable in terms of supporting the teaching and learning of Spanish. Governor monitoring with our subject MFL link governor is also regularly used monitor the progression and impact of MFL teaching and learning.  Pupil voice has highlighted the importance of learning a new language as children can see the value and benefit of speaking additional languages, which they often will progress further at secondary school. In addition, many children enjoy lots of the games and songs learned in the sessions, allowing them to learn in a stimulating way.

Spanish Curriculum Overview

Spanish Knowledge Organisers

Recent pupil voice highlighted the following:

"I have used some of the learning from school on my holiday to Madrid, Spain" (A pupil in Year 6)

"I am going to continue learning Spanish at secondary school because I have already learnt lots at Radford Semele" (A pupil in Year 6)

"I think it is really important to learn languages because it can help you to speak to different people" (A pupil in Year 5)

"I would like to get a job one day in languages, maybe as a translator" (A pupil in Year 5)

"I enjoy the games, songs and activities we do in our lessons" (A pupil in Year 4)

"I visited Seville and Barcelona and used some Spanish words we learn in school" (A pupil in Year 3)