Intent

At Holy Family Catholic Primary School, we believe that learning a foreign language provides an opening to other cultures whilst fostering pupils’ curiosity and deepening their understanding of the world. It provides a valuable educational, social and cultural experience for our pupils, helping them to develop communication skills including key skills of speaking and listening and extends their knowledge of how language works. We aim to instill in our children a love for Modern Foreign Languages that continues into adult life, especially as it stimulates language development, social development and cultural awareness.

Implementation

At Holy Family, KS2 pupils are taught Spanish by specialist Foreign Language Teachers. In addition to these discrete lessons, teachers encourage Spanish to be spoken as part of the school day by encouraging children to use their language skills in a range of different activities, for example taking the register, and saying prayers in Spanish. Teachers contribute to raising the profile of Spanish within the school by creating purposeful cross curricular links, where appropriate. For example, in Religious Education pupils are given the opportunity to research and explore Christmas traditions in Spain and compare them with traditions from other countries around the world, including the UK. Developing pupils’ intercultural understanding is particularly evident during our Spanish Day.

MFL lessons begin in Key Stage 2. When children enter KS2, every class has a timetabled lesson slot each week, which is taught by Specialist Spanish teachers. Teachers are present in classes during this time; providing them with a greater understanding of the Spanish curriculum and how it is being delivered, whilst also giving them the opportunity to embed the skills of the specialist language teacher throughout the school day.

Spanish is taught via a topic approach. Our curriculum overview for Spanish outlines the different topics that will be taught within each term across the year. Each topic enables children to build on prior learning from previous years and extend and deepen their knowledge and skills. Each year group, follows differentiated learning outcomes that encourage children’s understanding and knowledge of the Spanish language to deepen and progress. The topics covered are introduced in Year 3, built upon in Year 4, reinforced and applied in Year 5 and 6, with more depth. The planning is designed to balance the key skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing in each topic. Spanish is taught through the La Jolie Ronde Scheme, which is tailored to the needs of our pupils.

At Holy Family we provide additional opportunities for our pupils to further extend their knowledge, understanding and skills of foreign languages. The Modern Foreign Language after school clubs we run at Holy Family includes Spanish and French.