• Communication 

• Creativity 

• Problem Solving 

• Work Ethic 

• Extracting Important Information 

• Improvisation 

• Emotional Intelligence  

• Negotiating 

• Expressing Ideas 

• Listening  

• Verbal Communication 

• Written Communication 

• Multitasking 

• Personal Motivation 

• Persuading Others 

The aim of the Key Stage 3 curriculum is to: 

• Enable students to survive in a foreign country. 
• Have an insight in to the culture of that country. This will also include access to authentic materials. 
• Be able to understand and give information on up-to-date and relevant topics which are pertinent to students’ everyday lives. 
• Teach grammar which supports communication and to prepare them for KS4 qualifications.
• Inform students on career opportunities using languages to help with options choices in year 9. 

Students are regularly assessed in the skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation to monitor and support their progress against their target grades. Vocabulary is both formally and informally assessed and students are shown a variety of ways to best learn their vocabulary. 

All students are given a Target Grade at the beginning of each school year. Throughout Key Stage 3 students are assessed in the 5 skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation and for each assessment they will be assessed against the National Curriculum. 

Course Content: Spanish

Social  

Social development is about young people working effectively with each other and participating successfully in the community as a whole. The development of the skills and personal qualities necessary for living and working together. The functioning effectively in a multi-racial, multi-cultural society, including understanding people as well as understanding society’s institutions. Social development looks at the structures and characteristics of economic, political principles and organisations, roles and responsibilities and life as a citizen, parent or worker in a community. It also involves the development of the inter-personal skills necessary for successful relationships. 

• Learning how to work independently, in groups and in pairs 

• Exploration of healthy lifestyles and reference to the negative impact of smoking, alcohol or drug abuse 

• Discussion about rights and responsibilities and about age of consent for various rights 

• Exploration of issues surrounding drugs, smoking, alcohol consumption 

• Social exclusion e.g. homelessness 

Moral  

Moral development is about students building a framework of moral values which regulates their personal behaviour. It is the development of understanding society’s shared and agreed values, the range of views and the reasoning behind them and the student forming their own opinion. 

• Exploration of relationships between friends and family members. 

• Discussion about rights and responsibilities of young people 

• Exploration of and discussion about moral tension that young people face when discussing an aspect of youth culture (A Level) 

• Exploration of and discussion about ‘fair trade’ business, equal opportunities the environment, death penalty, organ donation (A Level) 

Cultural  

Cultural development is about our students understanding not only their own culture but that of the world about them. It is about understanding and feeling comfortable in a variety of cultures and being able to operate in the emerging world of shared experiences provided by television, travel and the Internet. The key message is that “different isn’t wrong”: 

Spiritual  

This is about the development of a sense of identity, self-worth, personal insight, meaning and purpose. 

• Exploration of religious and non-religious celebrations and festivals in Spanish and German speaking countries, reflecting on their meaning and significance and how they may differ with our own celebrations. 

• At A Level we explore the Muslim faith in Spanish and German speaking countries, and the impact and issues arising from tension, xenophobia, fear etc. 

The Modern Languages Faculty is excited to be able to offer our students a variety of activities to enrich and extend their linguistic skills. 
Gifted linguists are given the opportunity to participate in MFL specific enrichment days where the focus is very much on using their skills to either learn different languages or indeed to enrich and expand the language they are studying. These enrichment days cover global aspects of language learning, including culture, traditions, history as well as communication and language skills. To date, our enrichment days have covered Japanese, Swahili and Spanish. 
We are very happy to be able to offer a virtual German exchange with our partner school for years 7-9 and a Spanish film club for Year 9 pupils.

Students in KS4 and 5 also have the opportunity to visit other language specialist schools, colleges and universities and participate in events, activities and lectures. 

Year 9 students have the opportunity for a trip to Spain

Portal and VLE 

From the portal, students are able to access the following: 

• textbooks used in class 

• KS3 homework booklets 

• KS3 vocabulary sheets 

• exchange folder: students can access resources added by their classroom teacher such as Powerpoint presentations, worksheets, listening practice, past exam papers… 

• school closure work. 

Learning Environment 

Our faculty, affectionately known by us as the `penthouse suite’, has far reaching views in each direction across town and country. It is spacious, attractive and welcoming. Learning takes place in a stimulating suite of bright, tidy and well-resourced rooms including a brand new set of laptops which is exclusively for the use of the MFL department, with the latest technology. For A Level students, we can offer a brand new teaching suite designed especially around the needs of these students. Each teaching room is equipped with the latest course books, up to date dictionaries and smart screens in order to support both class based and independent learning. Every student has access via the internet to course material tailored to the student’s courses which is created to reinforce learning either at home or in the classroom. 

We believe that literacy has an important role to play in MFL lessons. As such at Key Stage 3 each class has a lesson every half term in the library where they have the opportunity to read our Mary Glasgow Magazines. These contain up to date articles on fashion, sports and current music, TV artists and current events. Students then get to answer puzzles and quizzes on what they have read. 
In lessons each student is given a vocabulary list for each unit of study to support their learning. We use these in conjunction with grammar lessons to help students understand how a language is constructed. With this knowledge we encourage students to adopt patterns and manipulate language to say more of what they want and not just copy and repeat set phrases. We believe that grammar has a very important role in language learning and provides us with an important role in whole school literacy. With this in mind we focus on identifying patterns in both languages and English to help students understand how language works.