Intent:

At Foresters Primary School, we are committed to providing a comprehensive Spanish curriculum that aligns with the National Curriculum in England. Our primary aim is to instill a love of language learning and cultivate an appreciation for other cultures. We strive to develop the confidence of our pupils in communicating effectively in both written and spoken Spanish for practical purposes. Through our carefully planned scheme of work, we aim to provide a solid foundation for all four language comprehension (listening and reading) and production (speaking and writing).

Implementation:

In our school, class teachers are responsible for teaching Spanish to students in Key Stage 2. We use Kapow Primary’s Spanish scheme of work as a basis for our curriculum, which is tailored to our school's context and the abilities of our students. The curriculum focuses on three fundamental aspects of language learning: phonics, vocabulary, and grammar.

Students are exposed to balanced opportunities for communication in both spoken and written Spanish, emphasizing the importance of the development of listening, reading, speaking, and writing skills.

The curriculum is designed as a spiral, revisiting key skills, grammar, and vocabulary with increasing complexity, helping students reinforce and build on their previous knowledge and making cross-curricular links. 

Our lessons utilize a range of teaching strategies, including independent tasks, paired and group work, role-play, language games, and language detective activities. The aim is to develop students' "language detective skills" and foster their understanding of Spanish grammar, rather than relying solely on memorizing vast amounts of vocabulary.  Each unit is based on a specific theme, providing students with a motivating end outcome that gives them a context and clear purpose for their language learning. 

Impact:

Our pupils leave Foresters with the skills and knowledge needed to:

• Be able to engage in purposeful dialogue in practical situations (e.g. ordering in a cafe, following directions) and express an opinion.

• Make increasingly accurate attempts to read unfamiliar words, phrases and short texts.

• Speak and read aloud with confidence and accuracy in pronunciation.

• Demonstrate understanding of spoken language by listening and responding appropriately.

• Use a bilingual dictionary to support their language learning.

• Be able to identify word classes in a sentence and apply grammatical rules they have learnt.

• Have developed an awareness of cognates and near-cognates and be able to use them, and other language detective skills, to tackle unfamiliar words in Spanish, English and other languages.

• Be able to construct short texts on familiar topics.

• Meet the end of Key stage 2 stage expectations outlined in the national curriculum for languages.

• Develop a greater awareness of the wider world and an appreciation for the role of language

• learning in promoting cross-cultural understanding.