Spanish

MFL at Horton Grange Primary School supports the wider work within school to foster pupil confidence and develop inquisitiveness about the wider world, enabling them to become empowered citizens of the world.

Our curriculum is based on the Language Angels scheme of work, which includes the statutory programmes of study as set out by the DfE in the National Curriculum.

The four key language learning skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing are taught and grammar is covered in an age-appropriate way. This enables pupils to use and apply their learning in a variety of contexts, laying down solid foundations for future language learning.

Spanish is taught from the beginning of Key Stage 2, from Year 3 to Year 6. The units of learning are structured into 3 different levels – early language, intermediate and progressive.

Pupils are given the opportunity to understand some of the cultures and traditions of Spanish speaking countries.

Early language

Pupils start to speak in Spanish and work on building up their memory skills. Pupils repeat and then recall from memory a variety of words related to topics such as fruit and animals. Pupils build on this by starting to create short, spoken simple sentences, learning how to greet someone in Spanish. Pupils are taught to understand some short passages of spoken language that they hear by listening to familiar fairytale stories in Spanish. Pupils start to develop their writing skills in Spanish by filling in missing letters for vocabulary that has been taught. They begin to learn grammar in Spanish by using verbs in their “I can ...” topic.

Intermediate

Pupils begin to build upon their Spanish vocabulary through topics about food, pets, classroom objects and family. Pupils learn how to create longer and more complex spoken sentences and learn to be able to introduce themselves. Pupils practise their speaking and listening skills by engaging in simple Spanish conversations. Pupils begin writing full sentences with increased ease and accuracy and are taught to understand how to use conjunctions such as “and” and “but”.

Progressive

Pupils develop spoken fluency further by creating a presentation about themselves that they deliver to their peers in the classroom. Pupils are taught to decode text they read using a dictionary for language they are less familiar with if necessary. Pupils begin to write longer passages of Spanish text with increasingly accurate grammar.