Spanish
Learning a foreign language is a necessary part of being a member of a multi-cultural society and provides an opening to other cultures. By the time children leave Danesfield, we intend that they will understand and respond to spoken and written Spanish from a variety of authentic sources and 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. Children will be able to write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt.
We teach Spanish across Key Stage 2. We aid planning with the Language Angels scheme of work to support the teaching and learning of Spanish. This provides clear progression for the development of speaking, listening and vocabulary acquisition, as well as a variety of resources to support the teaching and learning opportunities for pupils.
We aid the children’s learning in a variety of ways, through:
- Playing games in order to develop vocabulary through repetition, reading, writing, speaking and listening skills.
- Using role-play relating to situations the children may find themselves in the future.
- Learning actions, songs and rhymes to develop phonetic skills, memory skills and to further vocabulary.
- Reading and writing quality materials.
- Building children’s confidence through praise for any contribution they make in the foreign language.
- Using vocabulary books that the children take through the key stage with them, allowing them to revisit previously taught vocabulary.
- Teaching the children about a different Spanish speaking country in each year group at least once per half term, in order to develop their intercultural understanding.
- Celebrating a love of languages with days like The European Day of Languages.
Through the teaching of Spanish, our children leave us aware that a language has a structure, and that the structure differs from one language to another, having developed their language and communication through development of the four key skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing. They will have enriched their language learning by developing an intercultural understanding of Spanish speaking countries and transfer to Key Stage 3 effectively and successfully and will be well prepared to continue and develop their language skills.
