Cultural
In addition, the Languages faculty offers opportunities for students to work with their languages in a variety of contexts with celebrations of European Day of Languages and pupils also have the occasion to ‘enrich’ their learning through a series of days offered to all pupils ranging from International Culture, to a Asia Day and Africa Day celebrating links with partner schools internationally.
Educational Visits
The school offers language visits to France and ski/outdoors activities trips to France/Spain/Italy/Austria with the PE department; further, we have a reciprocal KS4 educational visit to France for students to improve their awareness of the culture and language with our partner school in Lille.
Opening Minds & Languages
Opening Minds competencies form an important part of language learning; we aim for full pupil participation with learners at the heart of the learning process with a full and deep understanding of their levels in each of the 4 language skills, and how they can progress, and who can assist with this development. Planned homework projects and established/planned International Links support the curriculum and collaborative projects form the basis of some assessments, pupils are taught the key areas of OM Competencies and how to apply these in their learning.
Curriculum Changes to GCSE languages from 2016
From September 2016, the GCSE in Modern Languages will be equally weighted as follows:
- Listening – 25%
- Reading – 25%
- Writing – 25%
- Speaking – 25%
In the current GCSE examination, there is NO coursework/controlled assessment and all skills are examined at the end of YR11 – this includes the written and spoken examinations.
Key Stage 3 teaching reflects the current GCSE examinations in the following ways:
- Understanding written instructions in activities in French/Spanish
- The ability to ‘translate’ small passages of English into French/Spanish and vice versa
- A fuller and deeper understanding of grammar including how to recognise verbs, nouns, adjectives, and connectives in French/Spanish
- More use of ‘authentic’ materials from France/Spain including popular music and literature as well as newspaper articles
- More independence in writing & speaking in French/Spanish without reference materials and the skills required to ‘recall’ important language to use in both of these examination areas
- Techniques to depend less on dictionaries and to have a better Vocabulary recall through improved and regular vocabulary testing
