Spanish

Spanish is taught as a Modern Foreign Language (MFL) from Daycare to Year 6. Daycare and Nursery children receive a 15 minutes lesson a week in which they learn songs with actions.

The Spanish curriculum includes the four main skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening. The curriculum shows clear progression skills, gaining in depth and difficulty from Early Years to Year 6. Some of the themes that are studies are: the numbers; colours; parts of the body; the weather, days, months, seasons and clothes that we were accordingly; parts of a house and how to describe them; the family; farm animals; wild animals; the city; the seaside etc. The MFL curriculum links with each year group topic as much as possible.

Children also learn about Spanish and Latin culture, geography of Spanish-speaking countries and ways of life and famous artists. Year 5 pupils visit the Tate Modern every year as part of their Pablo Picasso topic (plus other Spanish artists).

Opportunities to develop excellent Oracy in Spanish are facilitated in lessons and outside the class-room. All aspects of Oracy are considered and children have become very confident at self -critique and constructive peer critique. A dedicated Spanish role-play area contains resources and props for children to develop conversations through games and activities.

Children participate in whole school events such as work sharing assemblies, Christmas concerts, International Evenings and musicals.

In 2019, the MFL department carried out a school exchange Erasmus+ project that was involved in working with our partner school in Spain; exchanging work, receiving eighteen Spanish Year 6 pupils and their teachers and a trip to Spain for a group of Year 6 students that have consistently shown commitment to Spanish.

The school hosts MFL training for University of Cumbria students and MFL teachers from other Newham schools.

Parents and carers can support children with their Spanish by sitting down with them and watch presentations and films on YouTube. There are also many e-books that are read in Spanish and some also have an English text.

Some web links to support families and children with Spanish

Modern foreign languages/ Spanish