MFL

Intent

At Oasis Academy Nunsthorpe, our carefully developed curriculum is designed to maximise our children’s life chances by breaking cycles and providing opportunity by giving every child every chance. Our Spanish curriculum does this by promoting curiosity amongst our children, enabling them to discover more about the world in which they live and their identity within it. Additionally, it encourages them to become great citizens, who show respect and understanding of different cultures. Our Spanish curriculum gives children the opportunity to develop a passion for languages and to become confident communicators, in both written and spoken form. The spoken aspect of the curriculum also allows for the development of speaking and listening, in addition to other social skills such as turn-taking. Learning Spanish improves our children’s futures by providing them with foundations for further learning of languages and the potential to study or work in different counties in the future.

Implementation

The Spanish curriculum at Oasis Academy Nunsthorpe is designed to ensure coverage of all aspects of the National Curriculum. This, along with the Easy Start Languages programme, has been used to develop long term plans to set out the progression of knowledge and skills, including speaking, listening, reading and writing. These have then been organised into topic areas as part of our medium term plans. From this, individual lessons are carefully designed so that children are given the opportunity to acquire, use and apply their knowledge in a variety of ways. As part of the Easy Start Languages programme, children have access to videos and soundbites where they hear language spoken by Spanish natives and see aspects of their culture. To support this, they are also given knowledge organisers and access to displays where key vocabulary for topics can be found. Whilst there are many opportunities to develop speaking and listening skills, children are also given the opportunity to show their learning through drawing pictures, writing captions and sentences. In order to ensure that our children are given the best chance to succeed in Spanish, their previous experiences are taken into consideration. Whilst all children in Key Stage 2 are taught Spanish on a weekly basis, currently, many of our children have had little exposure to this language. Therefore, for the next four years, our curriculum will be adapted year on year to meet the needs of our children. Our Spanish curriculum is inclusive and accessible to all children, including those with SEND, as part of a broad and balanced curriculum. Individual needs are taken into consideration and children are supported through scaffolding, partner work and use of visuals. Lessons are designed to include multi-sensory activities, such as songs, videos and games, which help to improve recall. Tasks are also adapted to provide further challenge for those children who are more able in the subject. In order to support our children in generalising their knowledge of Spanish, we encourage the use of the language during appropriate parts of the school day, for example during the register time and when simple instructions are being given.