Curriculum Intent

At Istead Rise Primary School we aim to help children deepen their understanding of the wider world through the teaching of modern foreign languages. We believe that exposure to a foreign language at a young age not only provides a foundation for the future learning and exploration of other cultures, but it also teaches tolerance and respect for others.

The national curriculum for languages aims to ensure that all pupils:

• 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

• can 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.

Curriculum Implementation

At Istead Rise we teach Spanish as a modern foreign language. All lessons are carefully planned so that children build upon skills they have been taught previously and lessons are delivered in an exciting and engaging manner by the class teacher. Teachers use ‘Language Angels’ which provides high quality activities to cover key skills such as; listening, reading, writing and speaking. 

Spanish is taught on a weekly basis and pupils actively participate in lessons by listening attentively and showing their understanding by joining in and responding verbally. They also take part in pair, group and class work where they can practise correct pronunciation and intonation through role play. Knowledge organisers are used to support children’s learning. These are specific to each topic and are used in every lesson as a tool to further support children’s learning and independence within the subject. Our aim is for all pupils to be able to communicate both verbally in sentences, and through writing. Children will learn to write words and phrases from memory and we will also teach pupils how to understand and use basic grammar and vocabulary, while ensuring they have access to high quality resources to help them become independent learners. 

Class teachers are aware of their pupils’ needs and work tirelessly to ensure that every child is encouraged to continuously improve their skills through the use of visual stories, songs, poems and rhymes in the language being taught. Pupils' progress is routinely assessed through the consistent and purposeful appraisal of work during lessons, which provides pupils with immediate and constant feedback. Pupils will also complete an assessment at the end of each unit which provides class teachers with clear assessment information, as well as enabling pupils to demonstrate their learning and attainment over the term.