Modern Foreign Languages

How Spanish is taught at Arnot St Mary

At Arnot St Mary, we believe that learning a language enriches our curriculum. It provides excitement, enjoyment and challenge for our children, helping to create enthusiastic learners and to develop positive attitudes to language learning throughout life. The skills, knowledge and understanding gained from learning a language make a major contribution to the development of children's oracy and literacy and to their understanding of their own culture/s and those of others. Language also lies at the heart of ideas about individual identity and community, and learning another language can do a great deal to shape children's ideas in this critical area as well as giving them a new perspective on their own language. Our Spanish lessons are planned and delivered to classes once weekly by an FLT (employed by SIL) across KS1 and KS2 as well as Early Years.

Our intent is to:

• Capitalise on the ability of our  pupils to rapidly acquire passive and active  knowledge of another language
• Where possible and relevant, to embed the language into the main primary curriculum
• Broaden the cultural awareness of our pupils and to foster positive attitudes to language learning, speakers of other languages and other cultures
• Create confident language learners who enjoy languages, who can express their thoughts and ideas in another language and can understand and respond to its speakers both in speech and writing.
• Use Spanish language in  lessons where possible

Coverage through curriculum :

Approaches and activities include:

• Almost exclusive use of the Spanish language during lessons by FLT
• Providing opportunities in each lesson for pupils to use and practise what they have learned
• Language games to enhance motivation, contextualise learning and heighten enjoyment
• Learning songs and rhymes and stories (focussed mainly in EYFS)
• Focus on grammatical structures and phonology.
• Pair-work and group work
• Use of authentic Spanish materials
• Use of ICT where relevant and appropriate – for example commercially produced software, teacher produced resources, internet research and use of the interactive whiteboard
• Written activities to reinforce learning