Curriculum Intent

The MFL department is extremely excited to be offering Spanish alongside French on a weekly basis this academic year; providing our students with the exceptional opportunity to become dual linguists with equal proficiency in both languages in preparation for taking a GCSE in either language – or even both. Our curriculum aims to support students to understand life and culture in Spanish speaking countries to encourage receptiveness and adaptability to new experiences. We aim to develop confident language learners who are resilient and able to communicate effectively and confidently in Spanish, building skills in listening, speaking, reading and listening. We endeavour to make learning Spanish enjoyable and meaningful, providing students with a variety of language learning opportunities. We ensure that students have a sound understanding of oral communication skills as well as access to enriching reading and listening materials in order to progress readily to the next stage of their learning. We aim to develop independent learners by ensuring that learning in the classroom is enhanced through self-study.

Curriculum Outline

Year 7 Curriculum

Cycle 1: Students are able to ask and answer questions about themselves, their name, age and birthday.

Cycle 2: Students are able to describe the school subjects that they like and dislike including providing justified opinions about these and their teachers, and describing how often they study them.

Cycle 3: Students are able to talk about what they like and dislike to do in their free time and provide justified opinions about these including how often they do these things, as well as to begin to use the past tense to describe activities they have done in the past.

Year 8 Curriculum

Cycle 1: To ensure an aligned starting point due to the recent introduction of weekly Spanish lessons, our current year 8 students will cover giving justified opinions of their school subjects and teachers, similar to our Year 7s.

Cycle 2: Students are able to talk about what they like and dislike to do in their free time and provide justified opinions about these including how often they do these things, as well as to begin to use the past tense to describe activities they have done in the past.

Cycle 3: Students will be able to describe and give justified opinions about where they live and be able to recognise and be able to use some examples of the imperfect tense to describe where they used to live. They will also use the conditional tense to describe their dream home.

Year 9 Curriculum

Cycle 1: To ensure an aligned starting point due to the recent introduction of weekly Spanish lessons, our current year 8 students will cover giving justified opinions of their school subjects and teachers, similar to our Year 8s.

Cycle 2: Students are able to talk about what they like and dislike to do in their free time and provide justified opinions about these including how often they do these things, as well as to begin to use the past tense to describe activities they have done in the past.

Cycle 3: Students will be able to describe and give justified opinions about where they live and be able to recognise and be able to use some examples of the imperfect tense to describe where they used to live. They will also use the conditional tense to describe their dream home.

Year 10 Curriculum

At GCSE level, students will cover a range of topics that build upon those learned in Years 7, 8 and 9, whilst continuing to develop their’ skills in the 5 key areas: reading, writing, speaking, listening and translation. The curriculum is also designed to be culturally rich, to ensure a deeper understanding of life in the Hispanophone countries as well as encouraging students to debate the fors and againsts of controversial issues.

These are the topics taught at GCSE, the first 5 of which are covered during Year 10.

Unit 1: Family and relationships
Unit 2: Technology
Unit 3: Free Time and Leisure
Unit 4: Customs and Festivals
 Unit 5: Home and Region
 Unit 6: Social Issues such as healthy lifestyle
Unit 7: Global Issues such as the environment
Unit 8: Holidays, Travel and Tourism
Units 9 – 12: School, school rules, future studies and the world of work

Year 11 Curriculum

Students cover the remaining units whilst also incorporating key exam skills in preparation for the speaking exam just after Easter and the reading, writing and listening exams at the end of Year 11. They will continue developing their ability to manipulate grammatical structures and communicate with confidence when speaking, listening, reading and writing, across all of the units listed above.