Languages taught: French & Spanish

Sets / Mixed ability: Sets

Hours per week: 2hrs in KS3, 3hrs in KS4

Dual linguists: Only if they opt to study a 2nd language in Year 10. We alternate between French and Spanish for whole year groups. Current Year 7 are Spanish and Year 8 French etc

How long have you been working with the NCELP SoW?

Since the beginning!

Which features of the NCELP SoW do you particularly enjoy/appreciate with the NCELP SoW?

We love:

1. The very clear roadmap of progress with systematic revisiting planned for.

2. Introducing 10 different categories of words per week alongside a grammar point

3. The strong focus on culture

4. How well organised SOW / resources / supporting documents are

5. Systematic phonics practice

6. Paired grammar teaching

7. Teaching grammar rules through receptive practice before moving onto productive use

Every lesson starts off positively with tasks they can all do – phonics!

What is the impact on your students?

1. They can retain more over a longer period of time

2. More confident and enthusiastic as they are enjoying success every lesson

3. Every lesson starts off positively with tasks they can all do – phonics!

4. Beautiful accents – although sometimes I miss their little Geordie French accents !! 😊

Have you had to overcome any challenges and, if so, how have you done this? What is the impact on your students?

1. Getting all staff on board: we built up gradually before fully adopting and now all staff are using with great results.

2. Initially we found it difficult for lower proficiency learners, but we have overcome this with careful differentiation of the SOW and lessons / language guides and it is now proving to be succesful.

3. The jam-packed SOW: We spend longer than 2 lessons on each week – we cover 7-8 weeks of work from the NCELP SOW over a 10 week period. But the resources allow for this and are adaptable which is fantastic.

Have you innovated to suit your context?

1. We have foundation + higher SOW now in place

2. All lessons are fully differentiated: support, core + higher

3. Language guides have space to write sentences – foundation + higher versions too

4. We’ve written our own assessments – 3 per year to marry with out data entry windows

5. Explicit revisit tasks for our starter every lesson – fun and engaging

6. Added in extended writing tasks to support our school marking policies