Foreign Languages

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Aims and Objectives

At St Charles’ School, our teaching of Spanish contributes primarily towards the broader aims of our Curriculum Intent Statement:

Through our curriculum, children are encouraged to “Bring Forth Christ” and reflect our school’s values in all that they do. We want to utilise resources the surrounding area offers whilst also learning from its rich history. Developing greater links with our parish and local community will help us achieve this and also strengthen our faith. We will cater for the needs and desires of all our children by offering varied and experiential learning opportunities whilst developing an awareness of their responsibilities to the environment as future global citizens. Challenging each child through our inclusive curriculum is important to us but we also want them to learn from their mistakes through the development of their resilience. Finally, we want the children to demonstrate pride in all they do and develop clear aspirations for the future based on their knowledge of the wider world.

The specific aims of our teaching of Spanish are to enable our children 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.

Purpose of Spanish

Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality languages education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. The teaching should enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. It should also provide opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read great literature in the original language. Language teaching should provide the foundation for learning further languages, equipping pupils to study and work in other countries.

Adapted from: Language Programme of Study: Key Stage 2, National Curriculum In England published by The Department for Education, 2013 (Date accessed: October 2019)

Curriculum

Early Years & Key Stage 1

We encourage the development of skills, knowledge and understanding that help reception children and Key Stage 1 make sense of their world as an integral part of the school’s work. As such, children from EYFS and KS1 are included in any whole school activities such as themed afternoons so that their exposure to and appreciation of foreign language study begins at an early age.

Key Stage 2

At St Charles’ School, language teaching focuses on enabling pupils to make substantial progress in Spanish. The teaching 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, focuses on familiar and routine matters, using their knowledge of phonology, grammatical structures and vocabulary. The focus of study in Spanish is on practical communication.

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 (where relevant): feminine, masculine and neuter 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.

By the end of Key Stage 2

By the end of Key Stage 2, children will be able to:

• Follow a short familiar text listening and reading at the same time.
• Listen attentively and understand more complex phrases and sentences; join in to show understanding.
• Listen for gist.
• Understand longer and more complex phrases / sentences.
• Pick out main details from a story, poem, song, conversation or passage.
• Speak with increasing fluency.
• Prepare and practise a simple conversation using familiar vocabulary and structures in new contexts.
• Prepare a short presentation on a familiar topic.
• Understand and express simple opinions.
• Initiate and sustain conversations and tell stories.
• Speak in sentences using familiar vocabulary, phrases and basic language structures.
• Perform to an audience speaking clearly and audibly with accurate pronunciation and intonation.
• Speak with increasing spontaneity.
• Use repair strategies to keep a conversation going.
• Read carefully and show understanding of words, phrases and simple writing.
• Re-read frequently a variety of short texts.
• Read and understand the main points and some detail from a short written passage.
• Identify different text types and read short, authentic texts for enjoyment or information.
• Match sound to sentences and paragraphs.
• Broaden vocabulary.
• Develop strategies for understanding new words in familiar material including using a dictionary.
• Apply phonic knowledge of the foreign language in order to decode text.
• Write phrases from memory and adapt these to make new sentences. § Express ideas clearly.
• Write words, short phrases and short sentences, using a reference.
• Be able to write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences. § Write sentences on a range of topics using a model.
• Write in sentences using familiar vocabulary, phrases and basic language structures with increasing accuracy.
• Use personal pronouns: I, you, he, she, it, we, they.
• Develop an awareness of verb patterns.
• Conjugate regular high frequency verbs.
• Conjugate some basic high frequency irregular verbs.
• Begin to use adjectival agreements with accuracy.
• Use prepositions.
• Use the indefinite and definite article.
• Use a range of adverbs to make messages more interesting.
• Apply correct verb endings to write accurately.
• Verbal phrases – talk about yesterday or tomorrow in a simple way e.g. había.