Modern Foreign Languages Subject Leader: Frankie Martin-Sweet

Intent

Language Angels and PlanIt Spanish offer a coherently planned sequence of lessons, ensuring progressive coverage of the skills required by the national curriculum. Our chosen themes - Our Past, Let's Explore a Spanish Town and Discovering Spain - provide an introduction to the culture of Spanish-speaking countries and communities. It aims to foster children’s curiosity and help deepen their understanding of the world. A linear curriculum has been chosen to allow an opportunity for children to gradually build on their skills. Language Angels and PlanIt Spanish enables children to express their ideas and thoughts in Spanish, providing opportunities for them to interact and communicate with others for practical purposes both in speech and in writing. We aim to expose children to authentic Spanish and other languages at Telford and offer regular opportunities to listen to native speakers. The intent in Lower KS2 is that children acquire basic skills and understanding in Spanish with a strong emphasis placed on developing their Speaking and Listening ability. These will be further developed in Upper KS2 alongside Reading, Writing and Grammatical skills, gradually progressing to more complex language concepts and greater learner autonomy. Through our Language Angels scheme, we aim to inspire pupils to develop a love of languages and to expand their horizons to other countries, cultures and people. We intend to help children grow into curious, confident and reflective language learners and to provide them with a foundation that will equip them for further language studies.

Implementation

Lessons are sequenced so that prior learning is considered and opportunities for revision of language and grammatical concepts are built into lessons. Our lessons and resources help children to build on prior knowledge alongside the introduction of new skills. A series of lessons are suggested, providing structure and context as well as offering an insight into the culture of Spanish-speaking countries and communities. The introduction and revision of key vocabulary and grammatical structures is built into each lesson. This vocabulary is then included in display materials and additional resources so that children have opportunities to repeat and revise their learning. Language Angels has been designed by language specialists, including Spanish native speakers, so that teachers feel confident and supported. All of our lesson packs contain adult guidance, accurate language subject knowledge and accompanying audio materials.

We are lucky to have teachers and people from the school community to support the children's journeys through modern foreign languages to provide them with rich and engaging lessons.

Impact

Using the full range of resources, including display materials, will increase the profile of languages across school. We pride ourselves on the learning environment, therefore we endeavour to consistently provide key Spanish vocabulary on display, use spoken language and for this to be used by all learners at any given opportunity. Whole-school and parental engagement will improve through the use of language-specific home learning tasks and opportunities suggested in lessons and overviews for wider learning. We want to ensure that Spanish is loved by teachers and pupils across school, therefore encouraging them to embark on further language studies. Impact can also be measured through key questioning skills built into lessons, child-led assessment such as success criteria grids, jigsaw targets and KWL grids and summative assessments aimed at targeting next steps in learning.