Our School Vision

Our school is a community where each person is valued as a child of God. We are a Church of England school, inspired and guided by the life and teaching of Jesus. We work together to create a caring, friendly and safe school family, to enable the whole school community to flourish and each person reach their full God-given potential.

This document is devised to support this vision, and has the following intentions:

Pupils are empowered to develop the hope and perseverance necessary to engage the challenges of learning in the context of school and the wider world.

Teaching staff seek out every opportunity to ensure that all pupils flourish in MFL lessons, developing wisdom and creativity through an ambitious and broad curriculum that challenges expectations, deepens knowledge and develops skills.

MFL lessons are inclusive, so everyone is valued and respected – and tolerance and diversity are celebrated.

Intent

At Donnington C of E Junior School, our curriculum has been designed to allow pupils to develop a secure knowledge of the Spanish language, an understanding of Spanish culture and strategies to support them in learning a modern foreign language. The learning of a foreign language provides a valuable educational, social and cultural experience for pupils. They develop communication and literacy skills that lay the foundation for future language learning. They develop linguistic competence, extend their knowledge of how language works and explore differences and similarities between the language learnt (Spanish) and English. Learning another language raises awareness of the multilingual and multicultural world and introduces an international dimension to pupils’ learning, giving them an insight into their own culture and those of others. The learning of a foreign language provides a medium for cross-curricular links and for reinforcement of knowledge, skills and understanding developed in other subjects. It is our intention to use spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources to increase confidence and fluency. It is intended that when children leave Donnington C of E Junior School, they 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. They will be engaged and prepared to continue language learning at secondary school.

Implementation

As our children move through Key Stage 2, they will be taught Spanish as their modern foreign language offer. Spanish is taught incidentally through counting, taking the register and displaying the date in classrooms. In line with Framework guidelines, all pupils learn languages for no less than 30 minutes per week. This time allocation is made up of a combination of dedicated language lessons, teaching language through other subject areas and using language for real purposes in daily classroom routines. Our school follows the National Curriculum Languages programme of study, supported with resources from Twinkl. For each year group, it outlines the content of each block: the vocabulary, the new phonic sounds and the grammatical rules/teaching points. Alongside the planning outline provided, the programme also enriches this through accompanying PowerPoints, videos (spoken by native speakers), links to authentic literature, songs, games, culture points of reference and links to appropriate websites. The blocks are sequenced to ensure that key areas are built on each year, with opportunities for revision of previous learning. This is consolidated by our use of ‘Let’s Connect’ activities (retrieval practice) at the beginning of each lesson. This ensures that the children know more and remember more over time. In each block, new vocabulary is introduced in context and opportunities are provided to review and revisit this language in different ways. There are target grammar focuses and phonetical sounds built in over the sessions. New structures are specifically taught and then practised over time to ensure the children know more and remember more as they progress through school. Children have opportunities in each unit to practise speaking, listening, reading and writing skills and to learn more about the Spanish culture. Vocabulary banks are created for each block, focusing on the new vocabulary they have learnt and need to remember. They are able to refer to these in the block and throughout the remainder of the year to support their retrieval. ‘Cold Tasks’ and ‘Hot Tasks’ are used to monitor progress, assessing the children’s ability in speaking, listening, reading and writing. This allows teachers to consider what learning has been effective and areas to be revisited.

Impact

By the end of Key Stage 2, we aspire that our MFL curriculum will have had the following impact on pupils:

· Children will enjoy learning Spanish; they will have a passion and enthusiasm to learn a new language and want to learn more.

· Children will have a curiosity about the world; they will enjoy learning about other people and places and want to learn more.

· Children will be able to speak a new language with increasing confidence through discussion and asking questions, with accurate pronunciation and intonation.

· Children will be able to understand and respond to spoken and written language in different ways.