Mary Exton Primary School

Modern Foreign Languages

Mrs. Paterson is our Modern Foreign Languages Subject Lead.

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.’ (National Curriculum 2014 – Appendix A)

The skills, knowledge and understanding gained through learning a language contribute to the development of children’s oracy and literacy and to their understanding of their own culture and those of others. At Mary Exton Primary School, we believe that the early acquisition of Spanish will facilitate the learning of other foreign languages later in life. It is intended that when children leave our school, they will have a curiosity and desire to experience other countries and communities, realising that in a multi-lingual society, it is an extremely valuable and much sought-after skill to be able to speak a different language. Our aim is to engender the interest and prepare the necessary foundations, to enable our pupils to continue their MFL education at secondary school confidently and successfully.

Curriculum Overview

Skills Progression

Subject Leader Action Plan

MFL is taught as a discrete subject at Mary Exton and is taught through Spanish.  The subject is time-tabled weekly for 30 minutes throughout KS2.  We teach Spanish across Key Stage 2.  We base the MFL teaching on the 2014 National Curriculum through the ‘Language Angels’ Scheme of Work. We have adapted the scheme to the context of our school and produced clear progression grids and content for teaching and learning.  We use a variety of the following techniques to encourage children to have an active engagement with Spanish:

• Games – in order to develop vocabulary through repetition, reading, writing, speaking and listening skills.
• Role-play – these should relate to the situations the children may find themselves in the future.
• Action songs and rhymes – to develop phonetic skills, memory skills and to further vocabulary.
• Reading and writing quality materials.
• We build children’s confidence through praise for any contribution they make in the foreign language, however tentative.

 Our teacher assessment enables us to determine the learning and progression of our pupils in the 4 key language learning skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing) as well as monitoring their progress against the 12 attainment targets stipulated in the DfE Languages Programme of Study for Key Stage 2.

Teachers assess progress and enjoyment through a variety of methods:

• Staff surveys
• Pupil voice
• Book moderation
• Learning Walks
• End of unit assessments - assessment against planned learning outcomes.
• Self-assessments - children have the opportunity to assess their own language learning at the end of each unit using 'I can do grids’. These offer a quick and easy self-assessment for pupils and provide useful information to inform future planning and progression.

Through the high quality first teaching of Spanish taking place we will see the impact of the subject in the following ways:

• Children will become aware that a language has a structure, and that the structure differs from one language to another.
• Children will develop their language and communication through development of the four key skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing.
• Children will enrich their language learning by developing an understanding of the Spanish culture.
• Children will transfer to KS3 effectively and successfully and will be well prepared to continue and develop their language skills.