The aim of the MFL curriculum at Mounts Bay aims to create resilient and confident linguists. To broaden their horizons and experience new cultures, opening doors to endless opportunities. Our curriculum aims to teach lifelong learning skills and build responsible global citizens who are ready to live in an ever changing 21st century world. We endeavour to foster a love of languages through the use of media, technology and personal anecdotes while developing the knowledge, understanding and skills required to ensure the best possible outcomes for every individual student no matter where their language learning journey may take them. In KS3 the curriculum serves to expose students to foreign language and culture to promote global awareness. We intend to build on prior learning acquired at KS2 by recapping and reinforcing vocabulary and basic grammar. The foundations laid at KS3 allow students to deeper explore topics at KS4. The curriculum sequences knowledge and skills and aims to continually broaden student’s understanding of both the language and culture whilst developing their language competencies. We also hope that through our deep learning of grammar points students will further their understanding of their own mother tongue which can enhance their learning in other curriculum areas. At KS4 our curriculum builds on the foundations of KS3. We revisit topics that students are familiar with and we deepen knowledge and increase the linguistic and grammatical complexities. The KS4 curriculum aims to allows students to increase their independent and spontaneous use of the language whilst understanding the language in a wide range of contexts including authentic and literary materials. By the end of our curriculum we hope that the skills we have taught to our students means that they are prepared for either further studies or employment and that they have developed a sense of global cultural awareness.
All students starting at Mounts Bay have the opportunity to learn a language. We currently offer Spanish and French with students studying one language until the end of year 9. During our options process students can opt to begin the learning of a second language. Our options process encourages a high percentage of our students to follow a language to GCSE level. High quality teaching and learning is at the heart of everything we do at Mounts Bay. We focus on creating ambitious and aspirational lessons which allow students to discover the language both in collaboration with us as staff and as independent learners. Our five year plans are constructed in a way that students’ linguistic skills and understanding develop progressively whilst making opportunities to create cross curricular contextual links where possible. Our curriculum plans are reviewed and updated regularly to ensure that we are offering the most up to date language teaching pedagogy and technology to offer a curriculum that has maximum impact on the development of our students. Solo taxonomy is used to set lesson success criteria and help build knowledge in a structured clear way. We feel this is important so that students are able to see their learning progression. Students are regularly given opportunities to reflect on their learning through our feedback policy of feedback, feedforward and questioning. We use Seesaw as a digital vehicle for the uploading of work and students are now able to edit and create a digital learning journal. The MFL team work collaboratively to ensure there is consistency across classes and differentiation happens intrinsically with the planning of scaffolded and extended tasks to allow all students to challenge themselves where appropriate. We begin the delivery of the KS4 curriculum in year 9 to allow students to make a well informed choice as part of their options process. Our GCSE curriculum teaches to the top where we use a Higher Tier coursebook to structure our course. We are able to differentiate and support students with a bank of Foundation tier resources when and where needed. Students are taught from year 7 how to communicate in the target language as well as in English. The study of grammar throughout the curriculum promotes literacy and thinking skills that learners can apply directly to other areas of study.
Ultimately the impact of our curriculum can be seen in our improving GCSE results in both languages, however we believe it is about much more than this. Our physical geographical location and demographics mean that a number of our students have never travelled beyond the borders of Cornwall. It is our hope that our curriculum broadens the horizons of our students and that it encourages them to explore the world around them and beyond. Our students demonstrate the impact of our curriculum through end of unit assessments, extra curricular involvement, feedback at the end of each unit as well as dedicated reflection and improvement time in lessons. The impact of our curriculum can also be measured through lesson observations by both internal and external colleagues, work scrutinies, student voice feedback and behaviour data.