Vision: Providing knowledge and skills for future language learning.

At Curwen Primary, our Languages vision is to prepare children for life in a diverse, multicultural world. Through phonics, vocabulary and grammar, pupils develop communication and literacy skills to become confident, independent language learners. Learning another language fosters curiosity, respect and tolerance, helping children grow into open-minded adults.

 

 

Intent

• Give all learners the knowledge, skills and cultural capital they need to succeed in life.
• Set the foundations of future language learning.
• Children learn well with a coherently planned and sequenced.
• Prior knowledge is revisited; we continually revisit what pupils have learnt before, allowing pupils to know more and to remember more.
• Allow pupils to understand and communicate ideas, facts and feelings in speech and writing
• Clear progression of phonics, vocabulary and grammar.
• Phonics, vocabulary and grammar are intertwined and allow practice of all 4 skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking.
• Promote understanding and appreciation of different cultures, showing respect for different faiths and cultural diversity.

🌍 Language Awareness at Curwen! 🌍

Curwen continues to celebrate the amazing diversity of languages in our school! 💬✨

At the end of each lesson, children share what they’ve learned in their home language — whether through writing or speaking. The classroom atmosphere is incredible, with everyone feeling confident to teach and learn new languages from each other. ❤️

It is such an exciting and inspiring experience for everyone involved!

Language facts

• There are 6,912 languages in the world.
• 94% of the world’s population does not speak English as their first language.
• 75% do not speak English at all.
• Studying a foreign language develops your oral and written skills – even in your native language!!
• The number of careers requiring a qualification in a modern foreign language is increasing.
• More than 1,000 different languages are spoken on the Continent of Africa.
• Starting salaries for students graduating with ability in one or more modern foreign languages are higher than for students who speak English only.
• Over 300 different languages are spoken in London.
• Young people who speak at least two languages do better at school than those who speak only one.
• Learning and using a second language helps to protect the brain from the effects of ageing.
• Learning a language will make you competitive in the job market. Learning 2 even more so. Many European young people now learn 2 foreign languages as well as their own.

Yr 3 children were introduced to Spanish sounds, some vowels can be a bit tricky but they used songs to remember them.

Children enjoyed taking part in simple role-play activities; asking and answering simple questions about themselves, colours, numbers, days of the week and fruits. Children are beginning to communicate with their friends using the correct pronunciation in Spanish.

A favourite topic has been learning fruits using La sorpresa de Handa (Handa’s surprise)

   

 Yr 4 children have used videos, songs and books to learn about farm animals, the weather or their families. They have continued using Spanish sounds and learning about Spanish grammar. Children can recognise negative statements; use their phonic knowledge to support accurate pronunciation; express simple opinions and manipulate language by changing a single element in a sentence.

    

During Autumn Term Yr 5 children had the opportunity to introduce themselves to children in our partner school in Spain, Santa Clara Primary School. It has been a wonderful way to help children to transfer skills between English and Spanish; thinking about spellings, using dictionaries and think about the importance of grammar and punctuation. Letters are not extinct!!!

Yr 5 have discovered Spanish comics; children can apply knowledge of word order and sentence construction to support understanding of written texts.

Through the year, we had different role-play activities; ‘Going shopping’ was fun, challenging and rewarding.  Children’s positive attitude is crucial for effective learning.

  

As in previous years, Santa Clara visited Curwen in June. Children from both schools have the opportunity to develop the use of English and Spanish into a daily school practice; achieve language acquisition through practical immersion; develop a sense of achievement through children’s interaction with Spanish pupils; drive pupils towards acceptance and understanding of different cultural communities; enhance pupils’ awareness and interactions with diversity to support mutual respect and help our children to grow up and to be more accepting and tolerant adults.