Spanish at Chennestone Primary School

At Chennestone Primary School, we believe that the learning of a foreign language provides significant educational, social and cultural benefits for our children. Spanish lessons play an important role in developing children’s speaking, listening and literacy skills, self-confidence, and providing opportunities for enriching cross-curricular learning.

In an ever-diverse world, languages and international education encourage cultural understanding and mutually empowering relationships. We see language as a powerful tool for examining values, attitudes and developing skills to combat prejudice and promote self-esteem

We have selected Spanish as the modern foreign language our pupils will study because not only is it widely spoken, globally but data shows that KS3 uptake and success is strong in this particular language. As our pupils grown to become global citizens we want to equip them with fluency in a language that will help them later in life.

We teach Spanish across Key Stage 2 using the Language Angels scheme, which has been adapted to the context of our school, to support the teaching and learning of Spanish. This carefully sequenced engaging programme provides clear progression for the development of speaking and listening and vocabulary acquisition. Children will acquire a solid grasp of key, age-appropriate grammatical concepts as well as a grounding in phonics and a bank of key vocabulary, which is visited regularly to ensure retention.

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.
• Geographical and cultural study (maps, videos and pictures)