Spanish at Co-op Academy Medlock 

'Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about'

Benjamin Lee Whorf

 

Intent

Spanish is part of the broad and balanced curriculum provided for all pupils at Co-op Academy Medlock. We believe that all children should be able to develop a love of other languages and cultures and how this helps with an understanding of the world.  

All children have opportunities to develop their knowledge in Spanish as our chosen foreign language through the carefully structured and progressive Primary Languages Network curriculum. 

Language learning is essential within our school due to the rich diversity of languages spoken within our school community. This is marked in a number of ways to enable pupils to learn about their own language and that of others and how having proficiency in more than one language can broaden children's opportunities.  We see learning Spanish as central to this approach. 

Implementation 

Spanish is taught by class teachers and TA’s, in which the delivery is supported by the subject lead alongside the prescriptive lesson resources from the Primary Language Network. 

In Early Years and key stage 1 children celebrate the languages spoken within school and study a range of stories, poems and songs from around the world. These prepare the children for more formal language learning in year 3. 

It is a live scheme which is continually updated and revised in order to meet with current curriculum standards. Alongside the planning provided, the scheme is supported by accompanying videos, PowerPoints, audio files (spoken by native speakers), links to authentic literature, songs, games, cultural points of reference, seasonal events and cross-curricular links.

The children in KS2 build up their substantive and disciplinary  by working through the language learning stages from Stage 1 in Year 3 to Stage 4 in Year 6. The scheme of work is progressive, with the foundations being laid in Stages 1 and 2, ready for further development and challenge in Stages 3 and 4.

To promote active learning of languages, a range of teaching methods are implemented to ensure that children are developing their linguistic skills through listening, speaking, reading and writing in order to be secondary ready. Activities can consist of actions, rhymes, stories, song, drama, grammar focus, video clips, air writing, sentence structure, dictionary work, book making and many more creative ways to extend, embed and combine language skills. Written work is kept in workbooks, although formal writing is not the outcome of every lesson. The skill of writing is developed through the use of whiteboards and air writing, leading to writing in books.

Impact

Our curriculum is planned to demonstrate progression both in core skills and language learning skills. Assessment for learning takes place during lessons in order to evaluate and provide immediate feedback to improve further. Errors are corrected by being ‘re-framed’ with encouragement for all to ‘have a go’ and learn from any mistakes. Pupils self-assess each learning objective using PLN’s self-assessment cloud documents. There are inbuilt opportunities to carry out summative assessment (Puzzle It Out) three times during the year in listening, speaking, reading and writing in order to track progress.

Through the use of Puzzle It Out assessments and the tracking of results using a spreadsheet, progress can be monitored, and show the impact of language learning. The outcomes of these assessments allow staff to identify any of the core skills which still need developing and any areas of content which need further reinforcement.

Pupils positively engage with Spanish, make good progress and produce work of a high standard. 

As a result of our work, we have won Languages Network Transformation Award for 2024!