Staff

• Miss C Fernandez Head of languages
• Ms R Oliva, Assistant Principal and Teacher of languages
• Ms N Tucker, Teacher of Languages

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Curriculum Intent

Languages are powerful skills that can give you the key to many cultures, countries, and opportunities. An essential skill to have in our ever-changing world. Languages and knowledge of different cultures help to provide our students a wider perspective of the world around them as well as getting a better understanding and respect for other communities.

It is our intention that all our students enjoy learning languages at Weavers as much as we like teaching them. We carefully joint plan our lessons as a department. These lessons help our students to be successful at learning the knowledge and skills that would equip them to became successful citizens of a global community.

Our intent is also that students strive for success by linking what they are doing in the classroom with employability characteristics and transferable skills, so that they can recognise that personal development and growth is not just linked to qualifications and assessments. In order for this to happen we focus on:

Quality first teaching

The subject content of our curriculum has been carefully chosen in order for students to begin to learn high frequency words and grammar.

We aim to strive for success by creating confident communicators in Spanish and/orFrench. The languages department co- working with the languages CET community has designed a key stage 3 curriculum to help establish the foundation of our student’s interest and enthusiasm for Languages. Students will achieve that success by focusing on learning to:

• communicate confidently and competently in the Target language
• develop an understanding of how memory works and what techniques work best
• develop an understanding of TL grammar and vocabulary & therefore English grammar/vocabulary and able to retain it long term and apply it to different contexts
• appreciate other countries’ customs and traditions & therefore reflect on their own
• develop ambition and debunk myth that languages are too hard/irrelevant by giving pupils opportunity to shine
• broaden outlooks and horizons through awareness of TL culture
• appreciate other countries’ customs and traditions & therefore reflect on their own

In school events

We want to motivate, enthuse and engage our students both in and out of the classroom. We also want them to understand the relevance of the subject outside the learning environment and how learning French and Spanish will benefit in their future careers and lives. In order to do this, we expose them to different experiences, contexts and scenarios where they can use the language in an engaging “real life” way.

Every year we organise different competitions and events to immerse students in the target language.

In the past we have done Day of the dead competitions, cooking homework, flamenco workshops, African drumming, ordering food at a café, football and languages, why is important to learn a language workshop, Warwick university talks, visit to Theatre Cervantes in London, film days, Europe goes to Japan event to name some.

Cultural and language trips

Every year, for a week we take a group of around 30 students to Salamanca Spain and North of France. During that week in the day students have Spanish tutoring to improve their speaking, grammar and general language skills, followed by the opportunity to take part in cultural activities, such as Tapas cooking, snails tatsing, crepe making, visit to the boulangerie, salsa classes and city tours, in the evening.

Students have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the language and the culture.

Find out more about our French or Spanish teaching, using the links in the menu to the left.