At Merton Bank Primary School we teach Spanish as our foreign language. We want children to discover that learning a foreign language links them to the wider world and provides an opening to other cultures. We aim to foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world.  We support them to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. We hope that our language teaching will provide the foundation for learning further languages, ultimately equipping children to travel, study and work in other countries.

We provide targeted support for children learning English as an additional language and we value the other languages spoken by children in our school including Arabic, Mandarin and Tamil. We also celebrate other languages throughout the year, particularly on European Day of Languages in September. 

We use the Primary Languages Network to support our languages learning in school and for our home learning. Click on the link below to access their YouTube channel to find more information:

Assessing languages at Merton Bank 

Feedback about learning Spanish is usually given verbally by teachers, teaching assistants and sometimes by peers. Written work in books is marked to correct spelling and grammar errors and also provide some next steps where appropriate. Assessments are made each half term by class teachers and monitored by the subject leader.

Core Concepts

When learning any modern foreign language there are key core skills and knowledge that we want the pupils to learn and use as they develop their knowledge and understanding. These core skills and knowledge facts form the basis of our language curriculum enabling our pupils to build confidence with languages and to develop an interest in the languages of the world.