Our curriculum is forged on a set of four Big Ideas: Pronunciation, Accuracy, Tenses and Fluency. These are broken down and sequenced to ensure maximum impact. 

In Year 7, the curriculum builds upon the foundations of language learning introduced in KS2 and introduces metacognitive approaches so students begin to understand how they learn languages and the value of language learning.

Each Year also has a specific ‘Big Idea’ focus:

• Year 7 Big Idea – My Life

• Year 8 Big Idea – World Around Me

• Year 9 Big idea – Identity and culture

• Year 10 Big Idea - Spontaneity and Independence

• Year 11 Big idea – Confident linguists >> Exam ready

Vocabulary development is front and centre of our Modern Languages pedagogy and an intrinsic part of our Schemes of Learning and day-to-day practice.  We explicitly teach the characteristics of target language vocabulary but also support this by referencing English linguistic features to highlight the similarities (e.g cognates) and differences (e.g gender of nouns and adjectives).

Our pedagogy is influenced by the work of Gianfranco Conti and Steve Smith and is founded on the core principles of their research based EPI approach Extensive Processing Instruction. Research shows that this approach is especially effective with our cohort who often have limited exposure to languages at KS2. They are quickly exposed to language at sentence level and encouraged to communicate meaningfully from their very first lesson with us.

In essence, this approach builds vocabulary acquisition skills from the bottom-up, focusing on comprehensible input, mindful of cognitive load theory and chunking language in transferable structures rather than focusing on individual words.

This communicative approach helps to engage students and motivate them to become expert linguists with authentic pronunciation. At KS3, we follow a (6 lesson) structure:

• Lesson 1 = Pronunciation - Core phonemes

• Lesson 2 = Pronunciations - Consolidation

• Lesson 3 = Accuracy (Translation into English)

• Lesson 4 = Accuracy (Translation into French / Spanish)

• Lesson 5 = Expansion – Explicit Grammar

• Lesson 6 = Fluency – manipulating language with minimal support

In practice, this means lots of learning activities to embed, rehearse and repeat sentence patterns so as to aid working memory and interleaving of vocab so it is seen in and out of context. Students will be exposed to Tier 2 cognates through the Knowledge Organisers and Sentence Builders (these words are indicated by being underlined) and there is a Tier 2 word of the week which is focusing on linguistics or Tier 2 cognates that students may not be able to access.

Themes, topics, skills and assessment foci are interleaved across KS3 and KS4 so as to provide opportunities to embed and develop prior knowledge and skills. Memory strategies are explicitly taught from the very first day of Year 7 and referred to throughout. Low stakes testing of core vocab and structures are enabled and supported by Knowledge Organisers for every topic from Year 7 to Year 11. Dual coding (such as of verb paradigms / TAILORED success criteria) is consistent across the department and across key stages to assist in retention of knowledge and links between concepts. Translations into and out of the target language are used as low stakes silent starter activities to ensure students revisit core language regularly. We have a strong set of ‘Universals’ which are structures which are repeated across all Knowledge Organisers and our Home Learning and lesson content is parallel.

All lessons are created centrally and curated by our team of specialist teachers. This enables staff to focus on ensuring individual lessons are adapted to reflect the specific needs of each class.

The Year 7 curriculum develops core language learning skills such as micro-listening , grammatical awareness and strategies for tackling unfamiliar language. The first ‘Excellence Task’ is a challenging creative writing task which allows those with little prior experience of ML to adapt a model and more advanced learners to show their prior knowledge through a series of drafts. This has been more effective in identifying more / less able students than a one-off baseline test as had been used in the past.

Students continue to study either French or Spanish in Year 8. In Year 8 the curriculum builds on the skills developed in KS2 >Year 7 and applies them to a range of topics which relate to the wider world around them. Where they live, buying clothes, food and shopping and going on holiday. They are challenged through a series ‘Pit Stop Tasks’ to communicate orally and in written form about the wider world around them.

In Year 9, the curriculum builds on the skills developed in KS2 >Year 7 > Year 8 and applies them to a range of cross-curricular themes, wherever possible exploiting an aspect of French/Spanish speaking culture. They are challenged through a series ‘Pit Stop Tasks’ to communicate orally and in written form about themselves and their relationships with others, and explore the TL culture. Effectively, these topics mirror much of Theme 1 of the new AQA GCSE specification.

At KS4, Students opt to study either GCSE French or GCSE Spanish.

In Year 10 the curriculum focus is on spontaneity and independence so as to achieve our aim of creating independent life-long learners. All three GCSE themes are interleaved and prior knowledge is interleaved with any new vocab areas or linguistic concepts.  In Year 11 the curriculum focus continues to revisit prior knowledge and skills but with a systematic emphasis on how to apply these to exam specific tasks so that they achieve excellent results in valued GCSE qualifications.

Mixed ability teaching in KS4 allows students to develop beyond their target grades before decisions are made about tiering (towards end of Y11). Students are prepared for what GCSE success looks like – both at their target grade and beyond. Our weekly lesson structures ensure explicit use of exam material is sequenced to ensure we are assessing students' progress and identifying any gaps in learning promptly.

We explicitly teach KS4 students self-efficacy strategies to ensure they focus on clear, accurate communication and eliminate ‘unforced errors’. We continue to use TAILORED criteria but expand these to include 7+ criteria.

Our repeated mantras for all productive language are “Quality not Quantity” and “Beautiful lies not Ugly Truths”.