Spanish
Modern Foreign Languages Curriculum Statement
We believe every young person has the right to a high-quality MFL education and that the skills they develop through learning another language, as well as understanding cultural importance, give them access to a broader world of opportunities.
National Curriculum
The national curriculum for MFL aims to ensure that all pupils can:
- 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
Exceeding ambition
How do we exceed the ambition of the National Curriculum that makes our curriculum exceptional? Understanding the culture and traditions of the countries of the language studied in order to build respect and understanding of a multicultural world.
Here's our Curriculum Road Map for Spanish:
Intent
To ensure that every pupil achieves competency in the use of the language studied, in order to allow pupils to have more opportunities in their future life chances in the world of work and as a global citizen. MFL develops the core skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening and shows dedication and an ability to learn independently. Employers and universities recognise that learning a language shows resilience and tenacity and this will open more doors for pupils in their future lives. Learning about the culture and traditions of other countries builds tolerance and respect and allows pupils to gain social skills as well as communication skills. As well as this, pupils build confidence by pushing themselves out of their comfort zone and improve their knowledge of their own mother tongue by making comparisons between language structures. The MFL curriculum is challenging, engaging, and inclusive and it equips pupils with essential knowledge, skills and understanding as well as the linguistic and cultural capital needed to succeed in life. The subject aims to truly enrich the lives of pupils and foster a love of learning.
Implementation: - What does learning look like?
We consider progression in MFL to be a spiral - students come to us in Year 7 with varying knowledge and skills in the language studied. During their time with us, students will build on and improve these sets of skills - each time developing the sophistication, fluency and independence with which they use them. We introduce them to a wider set of vocabulary and more advanced grammar, to increase their knowledge of the subject and improve their reading, writing, speaking & listening knowledge and skills. As well as this, we give students the opportunity to discover the culture and traditions of countries of the language studied in order to build mutual appreciation.
In Years 7, 8 and 9 (Key Stage 3)
Year 7 students are firstly introduced to the phonics of the language studied and learn to introduce themselves and give their basic information. Across the year they will also learn to discuss their free time, their school, their family and their home town. Grammatically, Year 7 students will learn to conjugate present tense verbs and use the near future tense.
Building on vocabulary and grammar covered in Year 7, Year 8 students will learn to describe their holidays, discuss their free time, describe food and drink, make arrangements, and describe their home town. They will also be introduced to the preterite tense and recap present tense and near future tense verbs.
In Year 9, students will learn to further discuss their likes and dislikes, describe jobs and future plans, talk about their health and diet, discuss their rights and responsibilities, and describe a visit to Spain. Gramatically, Year 9 students will be introduced to the imperfect tense, as well as the future tense and use these combined with the present tense.
In Years 10 and 11 (Key Stage 4)
Pupils follow the AQA syllabus building upon the 4 core skills developed across their KS3 studies. Students cover three themes – Identity and culture (Me, my family, friends, relationships, social media, mobile technology, music, cinema and TV, food, sport, customs and festivals in Spanish speaking countries), Local, national, international and global areas of interest (Home town, neighbourhood/region, social issues, healthy living, charity work, the environment, poverty, homelessness, travel and tourism.), and Current and future study and employment
(My studies, life at school/college, education post-16, jobs, career choices and ambitions.)
Impact
At KS3
Students will complete one Quality Marked Formative (QMF) one Quality Marked Summative (QMS) per unit of work covering the skills of listening, reading, and writing. These will form the basis of our evidenced based grade (EBG). Students will be awarded a raw mark but not a grade. We assess students following a ‘traffic light’ system, in which teachers use their expertise and detailed knowledge of the pupils’ work to identify how successfully they are currently mastering each KPI (Key Progress Indicators).
We recognise that as part of their progression within our subject, some students may need longer or more practice to get to grips with unfamiliar forms, which may mean that they are not as secure in some tenses as they are for others (e.g. they may confidently use the near future tense, but struggle with the preterite tense). This may manifest itself as a pupil demonstrating ‘Green’ productive skills in one half term, but then as ‘Amber’ in the next. This is to be expected and does not indicate lack of progression. Over the course of the Key Stage, however, pupils should be able to track clear overall progress in the key MFL skills.
At KS4
For each unit of work, pupils produce one Quality Marked Formative assessment (QMF) and one Quality Marked Summative assessment (QMS) which are marked in line with GCSE grading criteria. Pupils at this key stage continue to follow the purple pen assessment model above.
In year 10, pupils sit PPE across the 4 skills which make up MFL at the end of the year. In year 11, they have one PPE examination set in November and one set in March in accordance with the whole school assessment timetable. For PPE examination marking, we follow a robust standardisation and moderation schedule to ensure consistency and accuracy.
At both KS3 and KS4, All Achieve Data Collections take place at weeks 10, 20 and 30. Students at KS3 and KS4 will be made aware of their progress and whether their Evidence Based Grade (EBG) is in line with their expected outcome grade (EOG). Interventions will be put in place for any students below their Expected following the AA data collections.
Cultural Capital Opportunities linked to Personal and Character development
The department offers a Spanish extra-curricular club looking at films, TV shows, music and language learning games. Within lessons, students learn about important festivals such as La Navidad, Semana Santa and San Fermín.
At KS4, pupils are offered extra-curricular support with their studies but also learn to discuss important cultural traditions and festivals.
Revision
Curriculum
