Español

"To have another language is to possess a second soul"

-Charlemagne-

INTENT

At Woodside Academy we believe that modern foreign languages are an important part of our wide and varied curriculum offer. The learning of modern foreign languages creates extensive opportunities for children and allows them to discover other cultures. Developing an understanding and tolerance for the wider world around them.

Research shows that language learning within schools boosts overall literacy and develops cognitive flexibility, critical thinking skills and creativity. We focus upon developing confidence, knowledge, and transferable skills through languages to help them to progress with languages throughout their educational journey.

Here at Woodside Academy, we work closely with Junior Jam, who provide our language teaching, using language specialists to ensure the learning provided is rich and progressive. Our focus language is Spanish, this enables travel to Spanish speaking locations to be more authentic, ensuring children have awareness of local customs and traditions. Whilst the National Curriculum promotes language learning in KS2, we offer teaching from Year 1 to Year 6, ensuring that children within Key Stage 1 are given the opportunity to gain experience within languages too, developing confident linguistics prior to progressing to Key Stage 3 and beyond.

We intend to develop understanding in Spanish through incorporating songs and visual learning alongside written and verbal tasks to ensure we meet the needs of all learning styles.

IMPLEMENTATION

The language learning must be age and stage appropriate, must be primary centric and based on good primary practice. The long term view of the themes explored and how children revisit core themes and build on core language and content.

How and when to teach themes and topics has been determined by age and stage of learners, progress in language knowledge, links to school calendar and times of year or sometimes the whole school curriculum focuses.

Activities need to reach all learners and address both the needs of the children who are learning the language and the needs and levels of linguistic knowledge of the teachers who are facilitating the learning.

Learning should include games, songs, and four core skills of language learning, opportunities to build language learning skills, culture, and stories etcetera.

Lessons are taking place a least once a week.

IMPACT

Within the lessons, pupils are closely monitored to ensure progression is being made and that what we’ve set out to achieve through our curriculum is being met. This is to gauge the understanding and retention of knowledge.
The impact for those children between Reception and Year 6 learning our language curriculum is as follows:

•    Children will have been provided with opportunities to communicate with each other in the Spanish.
•    Children will have developed their language through speaking, listening, reading and writing.
•    Children will have improved their language learning by developing an understanding of culture.
•    Children's progress will be tracked through an assessment which happens at the end of each half term. This can be accessed by all abilities.

We measure and evidence the impact of our courses through the following methods:
•    Verbal feedback during lessons.
•    Session Forms – These are weekly reports on whether the learning objective for the lesson was achieved which are accessible via your school portal.
•    Course Evaluations – These are half-termly reports for each class, measuring how the class performs against a range of statements specific to the course, allowing our instructors to track how the class performs against national expectations.
•    Reporting and Assessing – These are individual grades for each child covering attainment, behaviour and progression within the course which will be given should a school choose to opt into our Reporting and Assessing programme.
•    End of HT assessments – the instructor will give pupils an assessment via worksheets at the end of each half term. The assessment will ask questions relating to what they have been taught.