Young people who have a second language are at a huge advantage in life. It opens doors to new friendships and global opportunities, gives them greater facility to learn different tongues and enables them to think both laterally and creatively.

At Deanesfield, the study of Spanish is seen as a continuous process with vocabulary, phonics, pronunciation, and grammar being built step by step and progress being planned across time. Schemes of work show steadily increasing complexity of language and, as children progress through the school, there are increasing opportunities for them to read and write the language.

We value language learning highly and have chosen to teach it from Year 1 onwards. Lessons are shorter in KS1 and highly practical in nature, making use of a lot of songs and rhymes, manipulative materials, outdoor activities, opportunities to make movements they can associate with certain words and all learning uses contexts within the children’s understanding, such as food, kitchen objects, numbers and colours, family, parts of the body etc.

In key stage 2, lessons are slightly longer, and, at this stage, they are introduced to a Spanish exercise book in which, over time they build up a bank of vocabulary based on the learning themes taught e.g., clothing, hobbies, pets, the house, food etc as well as practising writing some sentences, phrases and eventually, longer compositions. Some of this learning repeats and builds on KS1 learning with the addition of written work.

Our aims for Spanish are that children should be able to engage in conversations and ask and answer questions. As they reach the upper years of the school, children should be able to speak in sentences, using familiar vocabulary and basic grammatical structures. They should be able to describe people, places, things, and actions both orally and in writing. Their use of Spanish reflects the vocabulary, phonics, pronunciation, and grammar they have been exposed to, built on and regularly repeated since Year 1.

Ultimately, we hope that the love of learning languages our lessons inspire, the high quality of teaching and high expectations we have of our children means that they continue to enjoy studying languages into key stage 3 and beyond.