Spanish
Intent: What do we want our children to learn?
Through the teaching of Spanish we aim to:
- Give children a strong grounding in the language, equipping them with the skills and tools needed to communicate effectively in a variety of real-life contexts.
- Instill children with a love of the language and an interest in Hispanic culture.
- Motivate them to want to learn more and continue their language learning beyond primary school.
Implementation: What does Spanish look like at Fircroft?
Spanish is taught by a specialist teacher who visits Fircroft one day per week and teaches each KS2 class. The emphasis is upon embedding strong phonics knowledge and authentic pronunciation, from the outset. Key patterns in both the sounds and grammatical structures of the language are always made clear and children are encouraged to spot them as they progress, so that by the end of KS2 they have a secure grounding in how the language works and an awareness of foundational rules of pronunciation and grammar. Children are also taught how to use their knowledge of English, and any other languages they may have, to decode unfamiliar words. Spanish and Portuguese children in the Fircroft community, help to enrich the sessions both linguistically and culturally, by being encouraged to share their knowledge of the language and experience of the Hispanic world, with their peers.
The big Ideas
The following 3 big ideas are woven throughout the Spanish curriculum:
Conversation: interactive scenarios form a key part of the children’s learning, building conversational skills in a progressive sequence, each developing the last by including an increasing amount of grammar and vocabulary, the constant being a sustained focus on embedding secure Spanish phonics.
Confidence: the children’s confidence to ‘have a go’ is nurtured throughout and they are equipped with key strategies for decoding unfamiliar language, including deducing meaning from the context and using their knowledge of their first languages.
Culture: Hispanic culture is celebrated throughout the curriculum, in particular by focusing on a variety of festivals and fiestas, at different times of the year. In the Geography curriculum, the Year 5 theme ‘Viva Espana’ has been especially created to complement the children’s Spanish learning, by discovering how and why the Spanish language spread across the world. The children also look at both the human and physical geography of Spain and Mexico.
Curriculum map
The Spanish curriculum is a spiral one, comprised of six half-termly themes. Spanish Curriculum Map
Impact: How do we support children to retain their knowledge and check that they have?
As Spanish learning is based upon a spiral curriculum, it supports children to retain and build upon their Spanish language skills.
In addition, we check children can recall their prior learning by:
- Launching each half-termly theme with a quiz based upon prior learning.
- Starting each lesson with a recap.
- Finishing each theme with a quiz.
