‘To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world’ Chinese proverb

We believe that the learning of a language provides a valuable educational, social and cultural experience for our children. It helps them to develop communication skills, including key skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing. Learning another language gives children a new and broader perspective on the world, encouraging them to understand their own cultures and those of others.

In line with the National Curriculum, we aim to develop and extend children’s knowledge of how language works. We aim to provide children with the confidence and independence to explore and be able to attempt manipulation of the structure of language, and in doing so, develop the linguistic skills needed to assist and lay the foundations for further language learning. As such, we begin this learning journey in Y1 and continue through to Y6.

As with all our subjects, our curriculum design interrelates different strands of knowledge:

Substantive knowledge represents the key knowledge and the vocabulary that is taught in each year group. In planning, this knowledge is the content we want pupils to know and remember.

In order to contextualise their learning and build schemata - units of understanding that can be hierarchically categorised as well as webbed into complex relationships with one another – we present learning to pupils as broad  ‘THEMES’ including:

• Culture and Lifestyle
• Food
• Me and my family
• School
• Environment

Disciplinary knowledge is broken into key categories such as listening, speaking, phonics etc… and is vertically integrated into progression sequences across key stages so that we can ensure progression and provide opportunities for pupils to build, revisit and deepen their knowledge and understanding over time.

Assessment  Learning in languages is assessed formatively by observing and making informal judgements across the four language skills. Assessment information is used to adapt the pace at which children progress through lessons and schemes of work.