Vision Statement
The vision and ambition of the MFL Department are aligned with that of the whole school vision, which is to be the best MFL Department in the country. The team is committed to broadening pupils’ understanding of the world and developing strong, life-long linguistic skills. Along with learning new topics, reinforcing knowledge in every lesson is the key aspect of learning a language. We give pupils plenty of opportunity to practise and therefore remember key vocabulary. This is the first step towards becoming independent as a language learner and therefore creative with the target language.
Furthermore, understanding and being able to communicate in another tongue opens the door to a whole new world of art, music, dance, fashion, cuisine, film, philosophy and science that you wouldn’t otherwise have been able to access.
Our vision can be summed up by Nelson Mandela’s quote which reads: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.”
The Team
Ms S Barlow – Teacher of MFL
Mr M Rawlings – Teacher of Spanish / French
Mrs R Rodríguez-García – Teacher of French / Spanish / Assistant Headteacher
Mrs L Rys-Kent – Teacher of French / Spanish / Head of Year 8
Mrs C Vallom – Teacher of French / Spanish
Intent
We aim to create the very best linguists by challenging students to think, act and speak like those working in the field would. We do this by equipping all our students with the knowledge and skills to thrive and succeed in language learning; encouraging and inspiring them with quality teaching, broadening their awareness of other countries and communities and providing opportunities for participation in a broad range of linguistic and cultural educational experiences.
Our curriculum goes far beyond what is taught in lessons, for whilst we want students to achieve the very best examination results possible, we believe our curriculum goes beyond what is examinable. Our students in Year 8 benefit from the opportunity of a visit to Barcelona in Spain, which being cross-curricular in nature, offers an experience which is not only linguistic but which supports and promotes many other areas of the curriculum.
Our curriculum in MFL forms the backbone of our ethos statement. Through teacher modelling, we encourage our students to be well-mannered, thoughtful and mindful of others and our enthusiastic and encouraging approach is mirrored in the engagement and enthusiasm shown by our students.
Our knowledge-engaged curriculum underpins and enables the application of skills. As a department, we carefully plan progression through our curriculum with a regular revisiting of content and skills to build on existing knowledge. From the outset we teach grammar, phonics, translation and vocabulary; using the correct terminology and making explicit links to English and other foreign languages’ grammatical structures, pronunciation and cognates.
We expand the Cultural Capital of our students by embedding their linguistic acquisition within a wide range of knowledge which goes beyond their own cultural experience and sets them up as intercultural citizens. We do this by teaching language contextually within topic areas and using target language to model and encourage students to communicate in the foreign language. We use authentic resources to offer immediacy and relevance to the MFL learning experience. Study of foreign language films, music, YouTube videos and texts are all commonplace in the MFL classroom.
The further rationale behind our curriculum design includes revisiting and building on existing knowledge. The topic areas and grammatical structures which are introduced at KS3 are seen as building blocks for more in-depth learning at KS4 and the use of IT programmes such as Linguascope and Duolingo are well-established for reinforcing newly acquired knowledge or for setting lagged homework for supporting longer term memory.
Implementation
Collaborative curriculum planning lies at the heart of what we do in the department. We introduced new courses in Year 7 in both Spanish and French in September 2019 Active Teach). Our aims are; to build confidence in spoken language, introduce the foundations of grammatical understanding and promote engagement and motivation in the subjects ab initio.
Schemes of work are clearly focused on language acquisition and we are developing resources for expanding our teaching of phonics. Alongside our new schemes of work in Years 7 & 8, we have introduced knowledge organisers, enabling us to define and share the core knowledge that we want our students to master.
From September 2023, we launched the ‘Duo-linguist’ pathway in Year 8, where more able students were invited to carry on studying both languages through to the end of year 9. Students on this accelerated pathway cover all of the required content in both KS3 French and Spanish and are taught within the existing year 8 curriculum timetable structure. This enables our most gifted linguists to study either French or Spanish at GCSE.
In recent years, we have worked on KS4 schemes of work, these are focused on embedding challenge, metacognition, memory techniques and literacy into our existing departmental curriculum. We also implement our curriculum through using a variety of teaching approaches and tasks which encompass the four key skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Impact
As a result of the quality of the curriculum and teaching and learning in MFL, we are proud to celebrate that students receive a truly outstanding education in our subject. Our results over time are illustrated in the table below.
Spanish
| % 4 (standard pass) | % 5 (strong pass) | Progress 8 | Attainment 8 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 66% | 45% | +0.04 | 4,3 |
| 2020 | 74% | 58% | N/A | 5.1 |
| 2021 | 76% | 56% | N/A | 5.1 |
| 2022 | 89% | 74% | +0.73 | 5.5 |
French
| % 4 (standard pass) | % 5 (strong pass) | Progress 8 | Attainment 8 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 88% | 75% | +1.04 | 6.0 |
| 2020 | 100% | 100% | N/A | 8.3 |
| 2021 | 84% | 63% | N/A | 5.2 |
| 2022 | 79% | 63% | 0.0 | 4.9 |
Our students frequently express their enjoyment of the lessons and the subject: mentioning the quality of the teaching, the support and the opportunities from which they have benefitted. We are delighted that our students leave us with more well-developed language skills that will not only help them pass formal examinations but also enjoy the culture and adventure of foreign countries in the years ahead.
Inspiration
In addition to the taught curriculum for Modern Foreign Languages, the department also strives to extend and add value to our students’ language education through a variety of activities, events and visits which aim to inspire a lifelong love for learning languages. Examples of this are:
- Annual residential to Barcelona for students studying Spanish. This is a chance for over 100 students per year to immerse themselves in Spanish culture, integrate with Spanish residents and live, eat, drink and socialise in the nation’s capital.
- Annual trip to Paris for students studying French a chance to visit one of the most famous and beautiful cities in the world where students can enjoy all the sites, sounds and culinary delights the city has to offer. A trip to Disneyland Paris on day 2 makes for a really exciting trip!
- Modern Foreign Languages week here lessons across the curriculum have a sharp focus on using other languages for certain tasks as well as tutor quizzes, dressing up as a character from another country and trying different foods.
- Historically the school has offered foreign language exchange visits to France and Spain and this is something that we will be looking into in the future.
- We have also run trips to the Battlefields in northern France with the humanities department as well as a trip to Italy with the art department.
- In lessons we look at the traditions and cultures of different countries. We take a step back in time looking at their history, art and even politics as well as looking at modern day festivals such as ‘El Día de los Muertos’ where students create their own masks. It is important that students understand and learn about different cultures, from what and when people eat to what sports they play. Did you know that bullfighting is still one of the top 5 sports in Spain?
- We also like to show students how much the English language is influenced by other languages, just over 100 Spanish words are used in everyday English, for example ranch; rodeo; sierra; tornado; armadillo; mosquito and vigilante to name a few. However, Spanish is completely overshadowed by French. Approximately 7000 French words are used in English! Apostrophe; batchelor; ballet; chauffeur; cliché; debris; elite; jubilee, lacrosse; massage’ ricochet; sabotage and we haven’t even began to think about all of those delicious food words such as croissant; pain au chocolat; baguette; soufflé, students love knowing that they already knew more Spanish or French than they realised!
Curriculum Roadmaps
Year 8 (Spanish) (Duo-Linguist)
Year 9 (Spanish) (Duo-Linguist)
