Languages

Modern Foreign Language at Ladybridge Primary School

The needs and background of our children, and the school’s core values, underpin all areas of our curriculum.

Learning a new language opens doors to the world and bridges hearts

Intent

At Ladybridge Primary School our scheme of work aims to instil a love of language learning and an awareness of other cultures. We want pupils to develop the confidence to communicate in Spanish for practical purposes, using both written and spoken Spanish. Through our teaching of Spanish through the scheme ‘Kapow’, we aim to give pupils a foundation for language learning that encourages and enables them to apply their skills to other languages, facilitates further language study and opens future opportunities to study and work abroad.

The Kapow Primary Spanish curriculum aims to provide pupils with a firm foundation of language learning. For this reason, we have carefully planned and sequenced when to teach the three building blocks of a language system, known as our Kapow Primary knowledge strands:

• Phonics.

• Vocabulary.

• Grammar. Pupils connect these building blocks of knowledge to create meaning in a variety of contexts, allowing them to develop their skills in the following strands:

• Language comprehension: listening and reading

• Language production: speaking and writing

Implementation

Through the Spanish scheme, pupils are given opportunities to communicate for practical purposes around familiar subjects and routines. The scheme provides balanced opportunities for communication in both spoken and written Spanish. Pupils first develop confidence and accuracy with oral skills then increasingly apply their knowledge to extended reading and writing as they progress through Key stage 2.

The scheme is a spiral curriculum, with key skills, grammar and vocabulary revisited with increasing complexity, allowing pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Cross-curricular links are included throughout our Spanish units, allowing children to make connections and apply their language skills to other areas of their learning.

Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work including role-play, language games and language detective work. Our scheme of work focuses on developing what we term ‘language detective skills’ and developing an understanding of Spanish grammar, rather than committing to memory vast amounts of Spanish vocabulary.

Each unit is based on a specific theme with a motivating end outcome which gives the children a context and clear purpose for their learning. Guidance for adapting the learning is available for every lesson to ensure that lessons can be accessed and enjoyed by all. To help pupils retain their Spanish learning, we provide information on incorporating Spanish into the classroom environment every day in our ‘During the week’ sections.

Impact

At Ladybridge, the impact of Kapow Primary’s Spanish scheme can be monitored continuously through both formative and summative assessment. Pupils frequently evaluate their own and their peers’ performance, respond to feedback and recognise their own progress. Every unit has a unit quiz and knowledge catcher which can be used at the start and/or end of the unit. Each lesson includes guidance to support teachers in assessing pupils against the learning objectives. An assessment spreadsheet will soon be available to record children’s progress in each lesson to enable you to build a picture of their learning through each unit. After the implementation of Spanish, pupils should leave school equipped with a range of language-learning skills to enable them to study Spanish, or any other language, with confidence at Key stage 3. The expected impact of following the Spanish scheme of work is that children will:

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

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

• Apply their understanding of phonics to make increasingly accurate attempts to read unfamiliar words, phrases and short texts.

• Be able to engage in purposeful dialogue in practical situations (e.g. ordering in a cafe, following directions) and express an opinion. Be able to identify word classes in a sentence and apply grammatical rules they have learnt.

• Have developed an a range of language detective skills to tackle unfamiliar words in Spanish, English and other languages.

• Use a bilingual dictionary to support their language learning. 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.