Spanish
Subject Leader: Mrs Martine Hastings
Link Governor: Mr Mark Bishop
Intent
At St Mary’s Catholic Primary School, our love of language reflects our multi-cultural school community. We strive to teach our children about diversity and tolerance of others; teaching the children another language so they can communicate with others, and learning about the cultures and customs of others, are integral to this aim.We provide all our Key Stage 2 children with a high-quality education in Spanish, with the intention of developing their love of learning about other languages and cultures. It is our aim to ensure that by the end of our children’s primary education, they have acquired an understanding of both spoken and written language, gained confidence to speak in Spanish with others and know how important fluency in other languages can be in their future as part of being stewards of a global community.
‘One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way.’
Frank Smith (Psycholinguist)
Implementation
Our language curriculum is designed to develop our children’s language skills and their love of learning a language. It develops language skills, through progressive lessons taught periodically throughout the year and embedding it into daily routines. This allows the children to acquire new language then use and apply it in a range of different scenarios and topics. Children are encouraged and supported to develop their speaking and listening skills through conversational work, singing activities and games. As their confidence and skill grows, children record their work through pictures, captions, sentences and oral recordings.
All children in KS2 are taught Spanish by their class teacher, using the rachelhawkes.com scheme of work to support our teaching. This scheme is progressive and builds on the language skills and knowledge the children learn year by year.
Useful Documents
The following file will give you an overview of the Spanish curriculum at St Mary's and our expectations of pupils in this subject area:
How to support your child
Impact
We know our language curriculum is impactful when our children make good progress and are engaged, demonstrating enjoyment and enthusiasm. Our curriculum will ensure all pupils develop key language learning skills set out by the National Curriculum, as well as a love of languages and learning about other cultures. Their introduction to the Spanish language at St Mary’s provides an excellent springboard towards fostering a curiosity of additional language learning at secondary school.