Red Oak Primary School, Lowestoft

Modern Foreign Languages at Red Oak Primary School

Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. 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. It should also provide opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read great literature in the original language. Language teaching should provide the foundation for learning further languages, equipping pupils to study and work in other countries.

The national curriculum for languages aims to ensure that all pupils:

• 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
• can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt
• discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.

Intent

The intention of the Spanish curriculum at Red Oak Primary School is that children are taught to develop an interest in learning other languages in a way that is enjoyable and engaging. We aim to encourage children’s interests about different languages. We help children develop their awareness of cultural differences in other countries. We strive to embed the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing skills necessary to enable children to use and apply their Spanish, learning in a variety of contexts and lay the foundations for future language learning. We aim to give children a basic knowledge and understanding of different phrases, words and sayings within a new language each half term.

Implementation

Our MFL curriculum is designed to progressively develop children’s skills in languages, through regular taught lessons in Spanish. Children gain, use and apply a range of vocabulary organised around topics. Children are encouraged and supported to develop their speaking and listening skills through conversational work, singing activities and games. As confidence and skill grows, children record their work through pictures, captions and sentences. All our children in KS2 will have regular language lesson each week. Children within KS1 will have welcome words and phrases around the classroom to be promoted and used orally. A different language will be looked at each half term to allow children to acquire more knowledge and vocabulary around a wider range of languages. Children in all years will experience a Languages day to look at different cultures and that language to widen their knowledge of the world around them.

Impact
Children will learn and remember more about MFL. Children will recognise and apply verbally key Spanish vocabulary as well as using a range of different languages that are covered across each half term. Children will be able to write a limited amount in Spanish. The large majority of children will achieve age related expectations by the end of the year. Pupil Voice will also be used to further develop the MFL curriculum, through questioning of pupils' views and their attitudes to learning a language.

MFL key targets for 2024 - 2025:

• Continue to raise the profile of MFL throughout the school
• For EAL students to share their cultures with their classes and year groups.  
• To continue to promote a different language each half term.

Below is a table that shows subject coverage in each year group over the academic year:

For a larger version of the timetable please click on the PDF:

Assessment

Children can be assessed using the Languages Ladder, which sets out objectives in listening, speaking, reading and writing and whether they have been met or not.