At Thingwall Primary School, children are encouraged to engage enthusiastically with languages by being taught lessons that are enjoyable and stimulating. As children’s confidence with a language grows and skills are developed, children begin to record their work, eventually building up to writing sentences of varying length and complexity. Our curriculum aims for children to:
- Understand and respond to the spoken written language and to communicate effectively in both speaking and writing.
- Listen to native speakers of the language to help recognise familiar expressions and sounds within the language and use accurate pronunciation.
- Read, discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied from authentic materials including books
- Be able to write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using a variety of grammatical structures.
- Immerse themselves in the culture of the origin country of the language studied to encourage engagement.
In key Stage 1, Children are encouraged and supported to develop their speaking and listening skills through conversational work, singing activities and games. This then builds up children’s confidence to begin using the language in written form by captioning pictures and writing simple sentences in Key stage 2. Other ways we ensure objectives are met are:
- Using schemes of work that encourage and promote correct pronunciation and recall of words and phrases through the use of songs, video clips and games.
- Use of visual prompts to help children with translation of new words.
- Use words and phrases and listen to instructions in the language to expose children wherever possible.
- Display vocabulary in classrooms and around the school to help scaffold language learning.
Languages are monitored by the subject leader throughout all year groups using a variety of strategies such as work monitoring, lesson observations, staff discussions and pupil voice interviews. Pupils are assessed regularly against Target Tracker statements and National Curriculum objectives. The impact of this is that children transition to secondary school with a solid foundation to continue language learning and engagement and enthusiasm to continue with this subject.