Holy Family Catholic Primary School

Intent

‘A high-quality languages education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. The teaching should enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing.’ (National Curriculum 2014)

 The skills, knowledge and understanding gained through learning a language contribute to the development of children’s oracy and literacy and to their understanding of their own culture and those of others. At Holy Family Catholic Primary School, we feel that the earlier a child is exposed to a foreign language, the faster the language in question is acquired. We believe that the early acquisition of Spanish will facilitate the learning of other foreign languages later in life. We will prepare children for the KS3 language curriculum to enable them to transfer confidently and successfully.

Implementation

At Holy Family we teach Spanish across Key Stage 2. Our authentic Spanish teacher uses the National curriculum to support the teaching and learning of Spanish. This provides clear progression for the development of speaking and listening and vocabulary acquisition.

 Our Spanish teacher has developed strong relationships with the children through consistency and getting to know them as they progress through their time in Key Stage 2. The children are exposed to the following techniques to ensure active engagement with Spanish:

• Games – in order to develop vocabulary through repetition, reading, writing, speaking and listening skills.
• Role-play – these should relate to the situations the children may find themselves in the future.
• Action songs and rhymes – to develop phonetic skills, memory skills and to further vocabulary.
• Reading and writing quality materials.
• We build children’s confidence through praise for any contribution they make in the foreign language, however tentative.

 In Early years and Key Stage 1 at Holy Family, we introduce the children to languages to enhance their understanding of the world around them. Using ‘Worldwide Wanderers’, we focus on a language a term, gaining knowledge about the country and learning simple words and rhymes.  

 Impact

Through the high quality first teaching of Spanish taking place, we will see the impact of the subject in the following ways:

• Children will become aware that a language has a structure, and that the structure differs from one language to another.
• Children will develop their language and communication through development of the four key skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing.
• Children will enrich their language learning by developing an understanding of the Spanish culture.
• Children will transfer to KS3 effectively and successfully and will be well prepared to continue and develop their language skills.

 "Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things but learning another way to think about things."
Flora Lewis

European Day of Languages - what is it?

As a diverse school community, it is important to celebrate the wide range of languages spoken within our school and across Europe! 

Europe is rich in languages - there are over 200 European languages and many more spoken by citizens whose family origin is from other continents. This is an important resource to be recognised, used and cherished. ,Learning other peoples' languages is a way of helping us to understand each other better and overcome our cultural differences.