Spanish
¡Hola! What happens when a child discovers that the same idea can be expressed in a completely different language?
At Sikh Heritage Girls School, Spanish gives pupils another way to communicate, listen and understand the world beyond their immediate experience. As a bilingual school, we already value the confidence and flexibility that come from living with more than one language, and Spanish extends this linguistic experience further.
Formal Spanish teaching begins in Year 1, giving girls several years of sustained language learning before they move to secondary education. Pupils become comfortable hearing unfamiliar sounds, experimenting with pronunciation and gradually building the vocabulary and grammatical knowledge needed to communicate for themselves.
Listening, speaking, reading and writing develop together. Underpinning these are three important strands: phonics and pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. As girls progress, they move beyond remembering individual words and rehearsed phrases towards adapting familiar language and constructing increasingly independent responses of their own.
We want pupils to enjoy learning Spanish, but we also want them to understand that successful language learning depends on careful listening, repeated practice, accurate recall and a willingness to keep speaking while accuracy develops.
Intent
Our Spanish curriculum provides strong foundations for continued language learning at secondary school and beyond.
Girls learn how Spanish sounds relate to written language so that they can pronounce and read unfamiliar combinations of familiar sounds with increasing confidence. Vocabulary is taught systematically and revisited regularly, while grammar helps pupils understand how sentences are constructed and how Spanish may work differently from English, Punjabi and other languages they know.
Over time, pupils learn to ask and answer questions, express opinions, describe people, places and experiences, and communicate familiar information in speech and writing. The aim is for knowledge to become secure enough that girls can adapt vocabulary and structures rather than depend entirely on memorised sentences.
Spanish also introduces pupils to the breadth of the Spanish-speaking world. They encounter places, people, stories and aspects of everyday life from Spain and Spanish-speaking communities across Latin America, learning that a shared language is spoken across many different countries and cultures.
Implementation
Building language from Year 1
Spanish is taught weekly from Year 1 onwards. We use Language Angels to support the sequencing of phonics, vocabulary and age-appropriate grammar, adapting material carefully for our mixed-age classes and pupils.
In the earlier years, considerable attention is given to listening and speaking. Girls hear accurate models of Spanish, practise unfamiliar sounds and develop a useful bank of high-frequency vocabulary and simple sentence patterns. Songs, rhymes, stories, games and structured conversation give pupils repeated opportunities to hear and use the language in meaningful contexts.
As girls become more secure, previously learned language is deliberately revisited and combined with new knowledge. Speaking, reading and writing become more demanding, with pupils expected to recall more from memory and rely less on prompts and models.
Phonics, vocabulary and grammar
Accurate pronunciation is taught explicitly. Pupils learn important Spanish sound-spelling relationships and use this knowledge when speaking and reading, helping them approach unfamiliar words rather than relying solely on having heard them before.
Vocabulary is selected carefully and revisited often enough to become usable. Grammar develops alongside it, with pupils gradually encountering features such as gender, agreement, sentence structure and high-frequency verbs.
Grammar is taught because it helps pupils understand how Spanish works. With growing knowledge of vocabulary and sentence patterns, girls become increasingly able to manipulate familiar language and create sentences of their own.
Speaking, listening, reading and writing
All four language skills develop across the curriculum and increasingly work together.
Girls listen attentively to spoken Spanish, respond to questions and take part in short exchanges. Their spoken responses develop from words and simple phrases into increasingly complete sentences, with attention to pronunciation and intonation.
Reading begins with familiar vocabulary and short phrases before extending into sentences, stories and other age-appropriate texts. Pupils use what they know about sounds, vocabulary and grammar to work out meaning rather than depending entirely on translation.
Writing develops in the same way. Girls move from supported words and phrases towards recalling language from memory, adapting familiar structures and constructing increasingly independent sentences and short pieces of writing.
By the upper years, pupils are expected to draw these elements together, using what they already know to understand and communicate language in less familiar combinations.
Language, culture and multilingualism
Learning Spanish also develops pupils' understanding of the communities in which the language is spoken.
Girls encounter aspects of geography, everyday life, traditions, stories and expression across different parts of the Spanish-speaking world. Cultural learning is not reduced to a collection of festivals, foods or stereotypes; pupils begin to recognise the considerable variety that exists between countries and communities sharing the same language.
The languages already present within SHGS are an asset in this learning. Pupils are encouraged to notice similarities and differences between Spanish, English, Punjabi and other languages they may know, including patterns in pronunciation, vocabulary, word order and grammar.
This helps girls see multilingualism as something ordinary and valuable while also making them more attentive to the way languages themselves work.
Equity and confidence
Pupils begin Spanish with different levels of confidence and prior exposure, but language learning is taught on the expectation that every girl can make meaningful progress.
Important sounds, vocabulary and grammatical structures are taught explicitly and practised repeatedly in school. Where pupils need additional support, teachers use visual cues, oral rehearsal, retrieval, repetition and carefully structured language to help new knowledge become secure.
Pupils with SEND continue to encounter the same core language, with adaptations supporting access and recall rather than reducing the expectation.
Mistakes are a normal part of learning another language, but accuracy still matters. Girls are encouraged to speak readily, listen carefully to feedback and improve pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar as their knowledge grows.
Assessment
Assessment considers what pupils understand and what they can increasingly communicate independently.
Teachers look at progress across listening, speaking, reading and writing, alongside pupils' growing command of phonics, vocabulary and grammar. Girls may demonstrate their learning by understanding spoken language, responding to questions, reading new combinations of familiar language or constructing sentences from memory.
The important question is whether language has become secure enough to be recalled, adapted and used rather than simply recognised within a familiar activity.
Impact
By the time girls leave SHGS, we want them to approach Spanish with confidence, curiosity and a secure foundation for further language study.
They should understand and respond to familiar spoken and written Spanish, take part in short conversations, ask and answer questions and communicate ideas using increasingly accurate pronunciation and sentence structures.
In writing, pupils should be able to recall familiar vocabulary and structures, adapt them to express their own meaning and produce increasingly independent sentences and short texts.
They should also understand that language learning is cumulative. Greater confidence comes as sounds, words and grammatical patterns are practised, remembered and repeatedly put to use.
Above all, we want girls to leave primary school seeing themselves as capable language learners who are comfortable encountering unfamiliar language and ready to continue developing that confidence.
Research-Informed Practice
Our approach reflects established thinking in primary language education. Strong progression depends on the interaction of phonics, vocabulary and grammar, supported by frequent opportunities to listen, speak, read and write.
The Department for Education's Languages Programme of Study emphasises practical communication, accurate pronunciation, the ability to ask and answer questions, writing from memory and adapting familiar language to create new sentences.
Ofsted's languages research similarly identifies phonics, vocabulary and grammar as the three central pillars of language learning and highlights the importance of sufficient practice for language to become secure enough for increasingly independent communication.
Language Angels supports this progression through its structured pathways across phonics and pronunciation, vocabulary and age-appropriate grammar, with listening, speaking, reading and writing becoming progressively more demanding.
Selected References
Department for Education. National Curriculum in England: Languages Programmes of Study.
Ofsted. Research Review Series: Languages.
Language Angels. Primary Spanish curriculum and progression materials..