‘A high-quality languages education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. The teaching should enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers.’ National Curriculum

Children in Byker speak over 23 different home languages and many are bi-lingual. We celebrate, share and champion the opportunities, advantages and experiences our children will have through the knowledge of more than one language. We want every child to be passionate, curious and confident about their foreign language learning abilities and to have the desire to continue learning a language after Key Stage 2.

Our children will develop and demonstrate substantial progress in the 5 key language skills necessary for learning Spanish (Speaking, Listening, Reading, Writing and Grammar) and will achieve the National Curriculum end of Key Stage 2 aims:

All pupils:

• Understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources
• 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
• Can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt
• Discover and develop an appreciation of a range of authentic writing in the language studied.

Our ambitious MFL curriculum is accessible to all pupils through careful ongoing scaffolding and adaptations as we aim to develop solid foundations in these key language learning skills - properly preparing them for the next stage of their language learning journey.  We will extend their knowledge of how language works and explore the similarities and differences between the foreign language they are learning and English.

In MFL we actively build up our children’s sense of community and strengthen their sense of identity through learning about cultures in other countries and comparing it with their own. 

Cultural Understanding:

Developing our children’s understanding life in Spain and Spanish speaking countries is a core part of our work.  Our learning in Spanish lessons is enhanced by work in other subjects and our topic on Andalucía, links with Spanish speaking children and seizing opportunities across the curriculum to reinforce children’s knowledge of Spain and the Spanish speaking world. Our links with a school in Peru focus on using Spanish for a practical purpose and learning more about the culture of a Spanish speaking country.

Preparing for the next stage in our children’s learning.

We want to make the transition from languages in Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3 as smooth as possible. We are in contact with staff at our local secondary schools to keep informed as to how we can best prepare our pupils for their next stage of their languages journey. We invite 2 teachers and 6^th form pupils to work with our pupils here at Byker. These collaborative mutually benefit both schools with the aim of exciting and motivating our pupils for their languages studies at Key Stage 3.