Spanish
At Gayhurst Spanish is taught to all children in Key Stage 2 for a minimum of 30 minutes every week. We hope that every child will leave the school feeling confident in listening to, speaking, reading and writing Spanish, and have a good understanding of the diverse culture of the Spanish speaking world. The curriculum is creative and fun, focusing on teaching the language through games and songs and lots of practice speaking Spanish. New vocabulary is recorded regularly by the children.
Teachers take the register in Spanish and give simple classroom instructions in Spanish to encourage familiarity. Every year in June we celebrate Hispanic Week where we pick a theme to be the focus on a cross-curricular level.
There is also a weekly Spanish Club where the children can complete additional work related to their current topic or use authentic material e.g familiar books in Spanish to further immerse themselves in the language.
Children in Years 3 & 4 also made links to their Spanish learning
through their geography topic: ‘Different Places, Similar Lives: Spain’. Here's a photo of children tasting foods from around the world as part of this topic. The children answered questions about the food in Spanish.
In their workshops with the Art Hoppers (the Hackney based art educators) children in Years 3 & 4 explored the cultural values of Spain – it's traditions, the people, the food and the rich heritage of art alongside the physical and geographic aspects of the country. They focused on the surrealist work of Spanish artists such as Salvador Dali, Juan Miro and Pablo Picasso, as well as exploring Cubism and put on a fantastic exhibition of their artwork in our dedicated #TAG gallery (see the poster below)
