Modern Foreign Languages - Strood Academy

KS3: MYP Language Acquisition - French & Spanish

Intent

Students in Language Acquisition through the MYP will engage in a range of cultural and academic experiences that enable them to read, write, speak and listen to authentic materials. Students will engage in learning a language for pleasure, showing interest in cultural aspects of the language, through an environment which makes links with other countries and cultures to prepare students for a global life as a citizen of the world.

Curriculum Journey

We aim to develop students’ language and communication skills by teaching and revisiting learning on set topics using grammar and phonetics as pillars to language retention and production. Throughout their journey students will be exposed to the 4 skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking with a gradual rise in difficulty in KS3 and KS4.

Using all 4 skills, a selection of topics are introduced in year 7, developed in year 8 and reinforced and this is then further extended in year 9. Our main topics are based on the MYP guidance and its global contexts for teaching and learning. These contexts are explored and revisited in a carousel style delivery throughout KS3. We advocate revisiting topics as it helps us reinforce and extend students’ knowledge throughout KS3 and is a key part of our recap and recall strategy.

Within the MYP framework pupils are put into phases. Year 7 and 8 are in phase 1 and year 9 in phase 2. Pupils in phase 1 are exposed to basic skills and vocabulary and are encouraged to develop those skills using reading, speaking, listening and writing tasks. In phase 2 pupils are introduced to more detailed skills and vocabulary and develop a wider range of skills through multimodal texts. In KS4 pupils will consolidate their MYP learning by building on their previous knowledge to understand, formulate and apply more complex structures and vocabulary.

Schedule of learning

Module 1: Identity and relationships (Criteria B – Reading)
Module 2: Identity and relationships (Criteria A – Listening)
Module 3: Local and international places (Criteria C – Speaking and D – Writing)
Modules 4 and 5: In and out of school (Criteria A – Listening, B – Reading, C – Speaking and D – Writing)
Module 6: Festivals and traditions (End of year assessment)

Schedule of learning

Module 1: Media and Technology (Criteria D – Writing)
Module 2: The wider world (Criteria A – Listening and B – Reading)
Module 3: Healthy lifestyles (Criteria C – Speaking)
Module 4: Future holidays (Mid-year review)
Module 5: Past holidays (Criteria C – Speaking and D – Writing)
Module 6: Tourism and Culture (Criteria A – Listening and B – Reading)

Schedule of learning

Module 1: Living at home (Criteria C – Speaking)
Module 2: Living at home (Criteria A – Listening and B – Reading)
Module 3: School and future plans (Criteria D – Writing)
Module 4: Exploring music and films (Criteria C – Speaking and D – Writing)
Module 5: Sports and activities (Criteria A – Listening, and B – Reading)
Module 6: Celebrity Culture (End of Year assessment)

Assessment

For each topic, across key stage three, students will carry out research, rehearse, perform and evaluate their own or another individual’s work.

Criteria

How this is assessed

A – Reading

Students will be asked to listen to an extract and will:

identify explicit and implicit information (facts, opinions, messages and supporting details)
analyse conventions
analyse connections.

B – Reading

Students will be given a text to read and will:

identify explicit and implicit information (facts, opinions, messages and supporting details)
analyse conventions
analyse connections.

C – Speaking

Students will be asked questions and will :

use a wide range of vocabulary
use a wide range of grammatical structures generally accurately
use clear pronunciation and intonation in comprehensible manner
communicate all the required information clearly and effectively.

D – Writing

Students will be asked to answer questions and will:

use a wide range of vocabulary
use a wide range of grammatical structures generally accurately
organize information effectively and coherently in an appropriate format using a wide range of simple and some complex cohesive devices
communicate all the required information with a clear sense of audience and purpose to suit the context.

Final grades are then awarded from a range of 1-8, with each ascending grade demonstrating the students mastery of that particular subject.

If you would like more information about Language Acquisition please refer to the IB subject brief here:

Resources

KS4: GCSE Spanish

Intent

In Modern Foreign Languages we strive to:

Engage students in learning a language for pleasure, showing interest in cultural aspects of the language as well as its linguistic aspects.
Create an environment which makes links with other countries and cultures to prepare students for a global life as a citizen of the world.
Encourage students to work towards their target grades equally across the 4 language skills.
Create, develop and review a flexible curriculum through schemes of work that suit both ends of the spectrum – able and less able students- reflected in our planning with sequenced schemes of work.
Create and review our lessons and content, using a broad but achievable delivery approach, with balanced, sequenced activities.

Curriculum Journey

KS4 will start in year 10 and pupils will follow a two year curriculum course based on the AQA specifications. Our curriculum is based on recap and recall strategies and pupils will revisit topics they studied in KS3 to reinforce their memory skills and support the development of new and more difficult grammatical skills. They will then be challenged with more complex vocabulary and structures taken from the AQA specification booklet in order for them to be prepared for their final exams.

As per the AQA equal weighing of the 4 skills (speaking, reading, listening and writing) pupils’ lessons will be divided into activities based on each exam skill, every lesson. In these lessons pupils will have access to authentic materials, exam based questions through the Exampro platform and the resources from the Kerboodle AQA GCSE digital books.

We aim to have the support of a Language Assistant once a week to support pupils with daily tasks and have one to one sessions in order to meet the demands of the speaking exams. Tasks will be modelled on assessment tasks to help pupils get familiar with the exam rubrics and structures.