Languages

Language is all around us. We experience it every day, with every human interaction. It is a vital means of communication with the world. 

"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head.

If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”

Nelson Mandela

Here at Devoran school, we listened to our pupil voice when deciding which language to immerse ourselves in.  Following a whole school vote, Spanish was the clear winner! Did you know there are approximately 425,000,000 Spanish speakers in the world? It is the fourth most widely spoken language and is the official language of at least twenty countries.

Intent

It is our intention that when children leave Devoran Primary School, they will have a natural curiosity and confidence to explore other countries, cultures and languages. Through our MFL teaching and curriculum we hope to:

• foster an interest in learning another language that is enjoyable and accessible to all
• help children develop their awareness of cultural similarities and differences
• increase children’s confidence in taking on the challenge of a new language
• celebrate the linguistic achievements of all pupils.
• support literacy, in particular developing speaking and listening skills

Our intention is to help children embed the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing in Spanish, encouraging them to use and apply their knowledge in a variety of contexts, while laying the foundations for future language learning.

Implementation

From Year 3 onwards, children at Devoran experience weekly Spanish lessons that allow to progress knowledge and understanding over each half term. While introducing new Spanish skills, we constantly revisit and build on prior learning. This allows the children to develop a bank of vocabulary and grammatical concepts, which they can enjoy applying to a range of different topics.

During lessons, 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, they also start to record their work through pictures, captions and sentences.     

We will continue to encourage children of all ages to attend our weekly, lunchtime Spanish club.

Impact

Our MFL curriculum will ensure all pupils develop key language learning skills as set out by the national curriculum. Pupils will:

• understand and respond to spoken and written language
• 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

 We will use ‘Target Tracker’ statements at the end of each term to assess the effectiveness of our Spanish curriculum in achieving the statements above. The impact of Spanish teaching will also be assessed throughout every lesson, by informally observing children during individual, paired and group activities.

To support this, we will continue to use assessment statements linked to each lesson’s objectives and other assessment for learning strategies such as:

• peer and self-assessment against ‘I can’ statements
• thumbs up, thumbs down
• personal target setting

 Most importantly, we will continue to listen to the pupil voice.