Year 7 Spanish

In Year 7 students are introduced to French, German and Spanish in a carousel of 3 x 11 week sessions. Progress is rapid and intensive - 6 hourly lessons and homeworks per fortnight. At the end of the year they will thus have had an introduction to all 3 languages. The classes also swap teachers for each language which means they are exposed to 3 slightly different approaches to learning languages and there is the additional advantage that the teachers will get to know all the pupils in the course of the year.

At the end of the year the students will be in a good position to choose which 2 languages to continue in Year 8. It has been decided that from 2009 Year 8 students must choose French and then either German or Spanish. It is expected that students will continue with both these languages in Year 9, although there may be a possibility of continuing with only one. MFL are no longer compulsory at GCSE, but it is hoped the vast majority of students will carry on with at least one language to GCSE.

The carousel has been introduced to accelerate and facilitate the uptake of Spanish as a GCSE language option. In recent years there has been an increasing demand from pupils and parents for the school to offer Spanish, probably because Spain, The Canary Islands, The Balearics as well as Central and South America are popular holiday destinations. Students thus have the chance to learn Spanish, although they can still opt to do French and German from Year 8.

In Year 7 great emphasis is placed on listening and speaking the language and extensive use is made of multi-media materials, especially Boardworks, to introduce the new topic areas and vocabulary. There are no textbooks, but all students have an OUP workbook from the appropriate language course and they use this for listening comprehension and reading comprehension exercises and simple writing activities which are often given as homeworks for reinforcement of language practised in the lessons. In the final week of each language cycle assessment tests are held to measure the students' progress and results in all 3 languages are collated at the end of the year for the whole year group

The following links can be used to practise at home. Just look for the relevant topic.

Language Link
Languages Online
Spanish Steps
Boardworks

Topics Covered (Amigos 1)

Yo
• Name.
• Alphabet and numbers.
• Age and birthday.
• Classroom objects.

Me presento
• Countries and nationalities
• Families.
• Pets.
• Colours.
• Descriptions.

En el pueblo
• Buildings in town.
• Asking the way.
• Saying where things are (prepositions)
• Weather.