Spanish

"Language is the road map of culture.

It tells you where people come from and where they are going" - Rita Mae Brown

İBienvenidos a nuestra página de español!

Children at St. Mary's learn Spanish! This is done through embedding speaking the Spanish language into our daily routines; you will find children greeting each other, answering the register and responding to simple questions. Lessons are designed to help our children learn in a fun and inspiring way and teach skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing in Spanish, so the children can use this when visiting other countries and demonstrate cultural respect. Teaching staff are present in classes during this time and support children in embedding skills throughout the school day.

Intent: Our Spanish Curriculum aims to give children an awareness of other cultures and have the confidence and resilience to communicate in Spanish for practical purposes, using both written and oral Spanish. We aim to give pupils a foundation for language that encourages and enables them to apply their knowledge and skills. Knowledge, skills and vocabulary are built on from prior learning and repeated with increasing complexity throughout their time at St Mary's. 

Implementation: It is a statutory requirement that every pupil in KS2 learns a foreign language and that pupils should make 'substantial progress in one language'. At St Mary's Catholic Primary School, pupils access Spanish lessons on a termly rota, one lesson a week in the given term. Spanish begins in EYFS and continues into KS1 with more informal lessons, using the Language Angels scheme. In KS2, pupils start to demonstrate an understanding of basic grammar, listening, reading and writing skills. Pupils are taught to listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding. Listening and modelling is key for any person wishing to acquire a language skill and by exploring patterns and sounds both in listening and reading in turn will help initiate writing and speaking skills. We embed our skills in our day to day life at St Mary's. Pupils respond to the register in Spanish, follow simple instructions and ask simple classroom questions. 

Impact: By the time the children leave St Mary’s, they will have a good understanding of how Spanish letters are pronounced differently, the difference in sentence structure and that grammar differs too. Children will have built up an idea of how they can acquire an additional language and have an appreciation and value in the four skills of listening, reading, writing and speaking. St Mary's children will have grown in confidence and will have the building blocks and be equipped with a range of language learning skills to enable them to study Spanish, or any other language, in KS3.

The expected impact is that children will:

• Be able to engage in purposeful dialogue in practical situations
• Know that a language has a structure which can differ from one language to another
• Make increasingly accurate attempts to read unfamiliar words, phrases and short texts
• Develop their language throughout four key skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing
• Speak and read aloud with confidence and accuracy in pronunciation
• Be able to identify word classes in a sentence and apply grammatical rules they have learnt
• Be able to construct short texts on familiar topics
• Learn how language skills can be applied to a range of language
• Meet the end of Key stage 2 expectations outlined in the National Curriculum
• Be able to transfer to KS3 effectively and be able to build on their linguistic abilities

National Curriculum

The government states that the national curriculum for languages such as Spanish aims to ensure that all pupils:

• 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
• Teaching may be of any modern or ancient foreign language and should focus on enabling pupils to make substantial progress in one language. The teaching should provide an appropriate balance of spoken and written language and should lay the foundations for further foreign language teaching at key stage 3. It should enable 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 in EYFS and KS1 are taught short, whole class and group lessons based on the Language Angels scheme, learning units that are relatable and purposeful to begin to embed the basic skills. Children will learn through songs, games, poems and stories. This is aimed at providing them with a foundation for learning languages at KS2 as well as fostering an enjoyment of language learning and knowledge of other cultures and traditions.

Pupils in KS2 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 Spanish grammar for example: feminine, masculine and plural 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