Learning a foreign language is a necessary part of being a member of a multi-cultural society and provides an opening to other cultures. At Austwick Primary School, it is our intent to provide a high-quality and passionate language education, which fosters children’s love and curiosity, deepening their understanding of the world.  We positively and respectfully encourage and value everyone's efforts with learning a new language. This therefore gives pupils the motivation and perseverance to keep going and to reach their personal goals. 

 The teaching enables children to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. It also provides opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read great literature in the original language.  

When children leave Austwick CofE Primary School we hope to provide the foundation for learning further languages and hope that the children will have a natural curiosity and confidence to explore other countries, cultures and languages, accepting that, in a multi-lingual society, it is a valuable skill to be able to communicate effectively with others in another language.  We strive to embed the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing necessary to enable children to use and apply their Spanish learning in a variety of contexts and lay the foundations for future language learning. 

We are extremely fortunate that the surrounding secondary schools both offer Spanish at both GCSE and A-level, encouraging the children to continue and strive with their language learning.  

Implementation 

Our MFL curriculum is designed to develop not only our children’s language skills, but also their love of learning a language. At Austwick, we pride ourselves in the fact that Spanish is taught throughout Key Stage Two. Our MFL curriculum is designed to progressively develop children’s skills in languages, through regularly taught lessons. All children in KS2 receive one hour a week of lessons. 

Children are encouraged and supported to develop their speaking and listening skills through conversational work, singing activities and games. As their confidence and skill grows, children record their work through pictures, captions and sentences.  

Lessons are sequenced so that prior learning is considered and opportunities for revision of language and grammatical concepts are built into lessons. Lessons help children to build on prior knowledge and vocabulary alongside the introduction of new skills. 

It is our intent that Spanish is taught following the National Curriculum, we use the ‘Language Angels’ scheme which both supports and guarantees that all areas of the curriculum are covered. 

As the children’s level of Spanish progresses throughout KS2, we endeavour to create as many cross-curricular links as possible with subjects such as Maths, English, History, Science and Geography. 

Impact 

Assessment of children's learning in Spanish takes the form of ongoing monitoring of children's understanding, knowledge and skills using key questioning built into lessons by the class teacher. Child-led assessment such as success criteria are also used to inform the differentiation, support and challenge required by the children. Summative assessment is conducted every 2,6 and 12 weeks by the class teacher through regular quizzes and at the end of each unit of work. This helps to target next steps in learning as well as informing the subject leader of progress and skills/knowledge still to be embedded. Spanish is also monitored by the subject leader throughout the year in the form of a collection of evidence including: (photos), children's workbook (displaying activities linked to speaking, listening, reading and writing) and looking at outcomes measured against age-based progression and pupil interviews to discuss their learning. This tangible evidence aids understanding and establishes the impact of the teaching taking place.  

By the time children leave our school we aim to: 

• develop confidence in themselves and their communication. 

• make learning a new language fun interactive and useful in the children’s lives. 

• access quality first teaching of Spanish to prepare and lay the foundations for secondary education. 

• feel willing and able to continue studying languages beyond key stage 2.  

• instil and foster pupil’s curiosity and eagerness to learn, deepening their understanding of the world beyond the United Kingdom opening their knowledge and experiences to other cultures. 

• build a generation open to and enthusiastic to learn new languages, meet people from different countries and explore new cultures.