Modern Foreign Languages
Our MFL Curriculum
Intent
We teach our children Spanish to generate a fascination for words and how language works, a wider curiosity about the people and cultures of Spanish-speaking countries and the foundational knowledge to support confident communication in Spanish.
Our curriculum focuses on the teaching of the language foundation that students require if they wish to visit, live or work abroad. It enables students to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and writing. Students are exposed to a range of literature and music in the target language to enhance cultural awareness.
Implementation
We follow a broad and balanced MFL curriculum that builds on previous learning and provides both support and challenge for learners. It is a spiral curriculum, with key areas revisited again and again with increasing complexity, which ensures the progression of skills.
We teach three core strands of essential knowledge:
- Phonics – the key components of the sound-writing relationship
- Vocabulary – a set of the most frequently used words
- Grammar – the essential building blocks required to create simple sentences independently (including gender of nouns, singular and plural forms, adjectives (place and agreement), and the conjugation of key verbs)
Our Spanish curriculum is designed to enable our children to:
- Develop linguistic and communicative competence
- Extend their knowledge of how language works
Explore similarities and differences between Spanish and heritage languages our children have, and English
Impact
Children are continuously assessed on the knowledge they are taught in lessons, whenever they are called upon to understand and/or produce language, without reference to resources.
Periodically they complete quizzes in phonics, vocabulary and grammar covering all modalities (i.e. listening, speaking, reading and writing), which assess the specific knowledge they have been taught.
How we assess in MFL: |
Quizzes in phonics, vocabulary and grammar |
Listening, speaking, reading and writing tasks |
Marking and editing work |
Presentations and role plays |
Retrieval practice |
Writing activities |