Modern Foreign Languages

Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. (National Curriculum 2014)

Vision Statement

We believe that learning a language enriches the curriculum at Crawford Village Primary School. It provides excitement, enjoyment and challenge for children and teachers, helping to create enthusiastic learners and to develop positive attitudes to language learning throughout life. The natural links between languages and other areas of the curriculum can enhance the overall teaching and learning experience. The skills, knowledge and understanding gained make a major contribution to the development of children's oracy and literacy and to their understanding of their own culture/s and those of others. Language also lies at the heart of ideas about individual identity and community, and learning another language can do a great deal to shape children's ideas in this critical area as well as giving them a new perspective on their own language.

In particular, language learning:

stimulates children's creativity
leads to gains across the curriculum
supports oracy and literacy
supports and celebrates the international dimension
liberates children from insularity and fosters pupils’ curiosity and deepens their understanding of the world.

Intent

Aims – pupils should be able to

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
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.

The curriculum provides an appropriate balance of spoken and written language and lays the foundations for further foreign language teaching at Key Stage 3. It enables pupils to understand and communicate ideas, facts and feelings in speech and writing, focused on familiar and routine matters, using their knowledge of phonology, grammatical structures and vocabulary.
Pupils are taught to:

listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding
explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes and link the spelling, sound and meaning of words
engage in conversations; ask and answer questions; express opinions and respond to those of others; seek clarification and help
speak in sentences, using familiar vocabulary, phrases and basic language structures
develop accurate pronunciation and intonation so that others understand when they are reading aloud or using familiar words and phrases
present ideas and information orally to a range of audiences
read carefully and show understanding of words, phrases and simple writing
appreciate stories, songs, poems and rhymes in the language
broaden their vocabulary and develop their ability to understand new words that are introduced into familiar written material, including through using a dictionary
write phrases from memory, and adapt these to create new sentences, to express ideas clearly
describe people, places, things and actions orally and in writing
understand basic grammar appropriate to the language being studied, including: feminine, masculine forms and the conjugation of high-frequency verbs; key features and patterns of the language; how to apply these, for instance, to build sentences; and how these differ from or are similar to English.

Implementation

Children are introduced to Spanish in EYFS and KS1. Children are gently introduced to some spoken Spanish vocabulary. This is done through the use of spoken Spanish in the classroom, which includes the use of Spanish to give praise, completing the register and referring to familiar objects in the classroom. This enables the children to develop early language acquisition skills that facilitate their understanding of the patterns of language and how these differ from, or are similar to, English. In KS2, each class has a weekly timetabled Spanish lesson.

Lessons across the Key Stages support the skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing:

Children are taught to listen attentively to spoken language and respond, joining in with songs, rhymes and games.
Advice has been sought from secondary schools that children will attend with regards to KS3 expectations and making our children secondary-ready.
Children develop an appreciation of a variety of stories, songs, poems and rhymes in Spanish that are delivered through the curriculum content.
Hispanic Day enables the whole school to be immersed in the inclusion of the culture and use the language meaningfully in context.

Knowledge and skills in Spanish are progressive and are mapped across the school, in line with our scheme of work.

Impact

Through the high quality first teaching of Modern Foreign Languages taking place we will see the impact of the subject in different ways:

Children will be provided with opportunities to communicate with each other in Spanish.
Children will become aware that language has structure, and that the structure differs from one language to another.
Children will develop their language through development of the four key skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing.
Children will enrich their language learning by developing an understanding of the Spanish culture.

Our MFL curriculum ensures that children develop their knowledge of where Spanish is spoken around the world. Varied learning experiences, including ‘European Day of Languages and National Day of Spain’ also ensure that languages are celebrated throughout the school community whilst providing a context for language learning and develop the children’s understanding of different cultures.

Unit assessments are used to record the progress that pupils are making in terms of knowing more, remembering more and being able to do more at the end of each academic year. This will record whether the children are working towards the age related expectations, at the age related expectations or exceeding the age related expectations.

These judgements will be quality assured by the subject leader using first-hand evidence of how pupils are doing, drawing together evidence from pupil interviews, observations of tasks, reading tasks, work scrutinies and discussions with pupils about what they remembered about the content they have studied.

These judgements will inform the curriculum and whether children are ready for the next stage of their education.

Day of Languages 2023

Please check out these excellent gallery entries to see how we celbrated International Day of Languages 2023.

https://www.crawfordvillageprimary.uk/work/international-day-of-languages-class-three/84189

https://www.crawfordvillageprimary.uk/work/international-day-of-languages/84166

Spanish Club