Edenthorpe Hall Academy Astrea Academy Trust
MFL – Spanish
“One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way.”
Frank Smith
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.”
Nelson Mandela
At Edenthorpe Hall we expect the highest aspirations for our pupils. We want all children to learn and make academic progress no matter their starting points. We have a clear vision for what we want pupils to achieve during their time at Edenthorpe Hall and have designed our curriculum to give all pupils the knowledge, skills and understanding they will need in their future years.
The purpose of Spanish
As a school, we believe that the learning of a language provides a valuable educational, social and cultural experience for our pupils, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities. It helps them to develop communication skills, including the core skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. The children’s knowledge of how language works, phonology and elements of grammar will be developed and extended. Lessons will enable pupils to make substantial progress in one language. The transferable language learning skills gained will assist and lay foundations for further language learning. It will provide pupils with the confidence and independence to explore and be able to attempt manipulation of the structure of language. Learning another language gives children a new and broader perspective on the world, encouraging them to understand their own cultures and those of others.
Implementation
Implementation – Curriculum
Our school follows the Primary Languages Network scheme of work (Click2Teach/Video2Teach). It is a live scheme which is continually updated and revised in order to meet with current curriculum standards. It holds at its core the Intent, Implementation and Impact of MFL whilst maintaining a ‘primary’ focus. Alongside the planning provided, the scheme is supported by accompanying videos, PowerPoints, audio files (spoken by native speakers), links to authentic literature, songs, games, cultural points of reference, seasonal events and cross-curricular links.
The children in KS2 build up their knowledge and skills by working through the language learning stages from Stage 1 in Year 3 to Stage 4 in Year 6. The scheme of work is progressive, with the foundations being laid in Stages 1 and 2, ready for further development and challenge in Stages 3 and 4.
Implementation – Teaching and Learning:
To promote an active learning of languages a range of teaching methods are implemented to ensure that the children are developing their linguistic skills through listening, speaking, reading and writing in order to be secondary ready. Activities can consist of actions, rhymes, stories, song, drama, grammar focus, video clips, air writing, sentence structure, dictionary work, book making and many more creative ways to extend, embed and combine language skills. Written work is kept in workbooks, although formal writing is not the outcome of every lesson. The skill of writing is developed through use of whiteboards and air writing leading to writing in books.
Impact
Our curriculum is planned to demonstrate progression both in core skills and language learning skills. Assessment for learning takes place during lessons in order to evaluate and provide immediate feedback to improve further. Errors are corrected by being ‘re-framed’ and growth mindset is encouragement for all to ‘have a go’ and learn from any mistakes. Pupils self-assess each learning objective using PLN’s self-assessment cloud documents. There are inbuilt opportunities to carry out summative assessment (Puzzle It Out) three times during the year in listening, speaking, reading and writing in order to track progress. The aim is for a core body of language (words and phrases) to be ‘left in the sieve’ (as quoted by Dr Michael Wardle, HMI Lead for Languages) by the end of each stage.
Through the use of Puzzle It Out assessments and the tracking of results using a spreadsheet, progress can be monitored, and show the impact of language learning. The outcomes of these assessments allow staff to identify any of the core skills which still need developing and any areas of content which need further reinforcement.