The aim of Spanish at Parbold Douglas Academy is to equip the children with the knowledge and key language skills to understand and communicate ideas, facts and feelings in oral recital and writing. We aim to develop the children’s confidence through providing practical opportunities to continually improve the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation, using familiar vocabulary and phrases. We want children to understand across the world people communicate in many languages and to give them the gift of being able to communicate in another language.

Our school values in Spanish

Through Spanish, our pupils are equipped to live out our shared Christian values and let their light shine by gaining a new perspective on the world and understanding their own cultures and those of others. Spanish provides our pupils with an opportunity to gain a skill that with allow them to share, collaborate and interact with people of different cultures and nationalities. Through our teaching, we demonstrate how communicating and practising a new language helps to build community and togetherness amongst our children, where they feel that they are supported by their teachers and peers to improve. Through interactive games and groupwork, the children are encouraged to show friendship and compassion for each other and understand the value of making a mistake, in helping them to move forward and learn.

Meeting the needs of our pupils in Spanish

Across Key Stage two, there is a focus on building the children’s confidence in communicating and responding with their own ideas and opinions. Through exploring patterns of language, the children are given the space to experiment and develop their communication with each other through performance. Practising learnt phrases and reciting rhymes and songs as a class, in groups or individually is aiding their progress and giving them the confidence in the way they communicate their learning aloud. Learning a new language, with a strong emphasis on the correct pronunciation will also build resilience, as they work to be precise and clear in their pronunciation.

Overview

Our Languages curriculum covers all aspects of the National Curriculum and pupils are taught to:

• Explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes and link the spelling, sound and meaning of words
• Appreciate stories, songs, poems and rhymes in the language
• Engage in conversations; ask and answer questions; express opinions and respond to those of others; seek clarification and help
• Present ideas and information orally to a range of audiences

Throughout KS2, Spanish is taught on a weekly basis by class teachers. We use the award-winning Language Magnet Spanish scheme of work. The curriculum overviews above provide a breakdown of Spanish teaching across KS2. 

In KS1, we provide our pupils with some opportunities to familiarise themselves with Spanish. This may include teachers taking the register in Spanish or learning simple Spanish songs.

It is estimated that 480 million people around the world speak Spanish as their native language (making it the second most spoken language by number of native speakers). We believe that learning Spanish at an early age will give our pupils important language skills for today's world. 

Whilst some of our local secondary schools teach Spanish from Year 7 upwards, we believe that an early foundation in Spanish will support children with all future language learning (regardless of language).  

To find out more about Spanish, please contact the Curriculum Lead (Miss Bixter) or our Spanish Lead (Miss Johnson).

Our Curriculum Policy can be found on the Policies page (link below).