Modern Foreign Languages

"A different language is a different vision of life" - Federico Fellini

Intent and Implementation

At St Columba’s, we know that every person is precious to God. As young bilinguals, we understand the importance of studying and learning about other cultures to provide as valuable educational, social and cultural experience for our pupils. Our Modern Languages curriculum provides a balance of spoken and written language with a focus on Spanish. 

We believe our languages curriculum opens pupils up to a variety of cultures and helps to foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. Whilst pupils in Key Stage 2 receive regular Spanish lessons, all pupils at St Columba’s are given the opportunity to develop a linguistic foundation from EYFS to Year 6 through a range of carefully planned opportunities for Modern Foreign Languages across the curriculum. The skills, knowledge and understanding gained make a major contribution to the development of children's oracy and literacy and to their understanding of their own culture/s and those of others. Language also lies at the heart of ideas about individual identity and community, and learning another language can do a great deal to shape children's ideas in this critical area as well as giving them a new perspective on their own language.  

In particular, language learning: 

• stimulates children's creativity  

• leads to better achievement across the curriculum 
• supports oracy and literacy 
• supports and celebrates different cultures and diversity 
• facilitates pupil curiosities and deepens their understanding of the world 

Through exciting, pupil-friendly and relevant topics in the Junior Jam languages programme, children in Key Stage Two engage and are provided with opportunities to understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources. This includes a regular visiting Spanish teacher. Pupils also begin to develop speaking with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and continually improving their accuracy and intonation.  

Pupils at St Columba’s are provided with many opportunities to build on prior learning, as we frequently practise and continually revisit important vocabulary, spellings and pronunciation principles, so that our children will learn more and remember more. We also immerse our children in the language through enrichment opportunities such as our Spanish Culture Day. This gives children the experience of tasting Spanish foods, engaging in various activities and learning about the culture of Spanish speaking countries around the world. At St Columba’s, our aim is for every child to achieve their full potential. We recognise that every child’s needs are different adapt this curriculum accordingly to meet the needs of all our children.  Pupils with additional needs such as Special Educational Needs are well supported in accessing Spanish through carefully planned adaptive strategies to ensure full inclusion across our curriculum. For pupils assessed as working at Greater Depth, teaching and learning facilitates an engaging and challenging curriculum which supports children in deepening pupil’s confidence, fluency and of Spanish.  

Our aim is for pupils to leave St Columba’s with a cultural capital and skills for life. By the time our children leave us in Year 6, our Modern Foreign Languages curriculum strives for pupils to leave St Columba’s with an embedded foundation of Spanish for further language learning in Key Stage 3 and beyond.  

Pupils will be able to:  

• Understand and respond to spoken and written Spanish. 
• Speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation. 

• Write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using a variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt. 
• Discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing of Spanish. 

Pupil Voice:

Here is what some of our pupils think about MFL at St Columba’s...

Examples of MFL Knowledge Organisers: