The Modern Foreign Languages Curriculum at St Robert Bellarmine

“We are God’s work of art.”

At St. Robert Bellarmine we believe a high quality languages education will foster children’s curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world, developing their understanding of different cultures. We also believe that learning a language will help children develop skills that will open further opportunities later in life. The teaching of Spanish in KS2 follows the objectives set out in ‘The National Curriculum programmes of study for Modern Foreign Languages 2014’ and provides an appropriate balance of spoken and written language, laying the foundations for further foreign language teaching at KS3.

Our Intended Spanish Curriculum

Our Spanish curriculum is built around the aims and objectives set out in the national curriculum. We aim for the Spanish curriculum content to be remembered in the long term as our basic principles are that learning only takes place if there is a change in the long-term memory.

Our Spanish curriculum takes a mastery approach. Our mastery approach is to ensure that all pupils have mastered key concepts before moving on to the next topic: it is knowledge led, (subject specific) and it focuses on the development of pupils’ long-term memory for fluency, which in turn, develops pupils’ ability to reason and deepen knowledge and understanding.

Spanish is taught as a discrete subject by a specialist languages teacher. Planning for learning carefully maps out the progression of knowledge and understanding, that fully covers the National Curriculum. Teachers are clear on the ‘key knowledge’ that we want our pupils to know and remember and this forms the basis of long-term planning for progression. The key knowledge is connected by reference to golden threads or substantive concepts and disciplinary knowledge.

The ‘key knowledge’ that we want our pupils to know and remember forms the basis of long-term planning for progression. This includes the ‘substantive concepts’ of: phonics, vocabulary and grammar. 

It also includes the ‘disciplinary knowledge’ of speaking and listening, reading and writing.

Curriculum breadth for Spanish outlines the core knowledge for each topic around which teachers have developed a coherent and deliberately sequenced curriculum to promote the development of pupils’ knowledge and understanding to further develop the substantive concepts building upon prior knowledge.

Curriculum depth in Spanish allows for children to progress in their knowledge by first remembering more, progressing to knowing more which they can then draw on as they learn to understand and use longer sentences and generate their own language.

We determine progress as 'remembering more and knowing more'. We believe that when new knowledge and existing knowledge connect in pupils’ minds, this gives rise to understanding.  We look for children, as their knowledge and understanding develops, to show that they can make connections, draw parallels and use increasingly sophisticated sentences which draw upon their knowledge of the language.

Our Enacted Spanish Curriculum

Our Spanish curriculum design is based upon evidence from cognitive science. Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction are fundamental in the day-to-day teaching of lessons. The main principles that underpin this are:

• regular reviews and the revisiting of prior learning
• continual checking of understanding through effective questioning
• strong teacher modelling and guided practice
• carefully sequenced lessons that use ‘chunked learning’, allowing new learning to be retained
• precise feedback for our children

In addition, we also understand that learning is invisible in the short term. Cognitive science tells us that for pupils to have a greater depth of understanding and sustain mastery they must first master the basics, which takes time.

A coherent and deliberately sequenced Spanish curriculum ensures that we practise things repeatedly, so children get better at them, and we revise things on a regular basis so that they don’t forget them.

Our Learnt Spanish Curriculum

 The impact of our curriculum can be measured through two main questions

• How well are our pupils coping with the Spanish curriculum content?
• How well are they retaining previously taught content?

The vast majority of pupils have sustained mastery of the content, that is they remember more and are fluent in it. Activities are planned for pupils to combine this remembered knowledge and fluency with the opportunities to demonstrate their depth of understanding. We regularly monitor pupils to ensure that they are on track to reach the expectations of our curriculum.

To explore how this curriculum area is taught in your child's class please refer to their class page.