International Schools and Modern Foreign Language

Modern Foreign Languages

Spanish

Our intent is for our children to 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; and to discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.

Our implementation involves Spanish being taught in a whole-class setting, by the class teacher. Children are taught Spanish once per week for 30 minutes. This is a mixture of speaking and listening activities such as call and response, chanting and songs leading into written work in the form of crosswords, writing captions for pictures and close procedures. Towards the end of each unit, the children develop their independent writing of words, phrases and sentences in Spanish.

We measure the impact with regular monitoring of recorded work. This can be in the form of exercise-book tasks or video recordings of speaking-and-listening activities. Lesson drop-ins, by the subject leader and senior leader, also support the quality of teaching and, thus, the impact on learning.

International Schools

We are extremely proud to say that we have recently been reaccredited with the International Schools Award! This award recognises the rich and diverse work that we do. We celebrate languages and cultures together, as a school, through key events that take place through the year – for example European Day of Languages. These events are integrated with education for global citizenship and helps form an essential part of pupils’ developing cultural awareness and understanding of others. This work also links to our dedication to RRSA and Global Goals – specifically ‘No Poverty’ and ‘Zero Hunger’ – in that learning is focused on providing our children with knowledge of what life is like in other parts of their world and what differences they can make.