Year 8 Spanish
In Year 8, students are set into ability groups according to how they have performed in core subjects in Key Stage 2 and Year 7 Spanish lessons. The Year 8 Spanish course builds on and extends the vocabulary and understanding of grammar the students have acquired in Year 7. The course is based around the Mira Express 1(ISBN 978 0 435387 66 2) & 2 (ISBN 978 0 435391 61 4) courses and is designed to prepare our students for the rigours of the new GCSE they will face in Year 11 and, hopefully, beyond. Further to this, we aim to explain how languages work and build students’ confidence in their ability to turn their hand to other languages they may need to acquire later in their lives.
Topics:
Mira Express 1, Module 5“El tiempo libre” / Greetings and introductions, numbers 1-31, birthdays, saying where you live, classroom language, school equipment.
Mira Express 1, Module 6
“En la ciudad” / Communicating and understanding what a town/area is like, what there is there. Describing the weather and saying what you do, when…
Mira Express 2, Module 1
“mi vida” / Describing friends/family + 3rd person form of the verb. Expressing opinions. Connectives. “para” – in order to
Mira Express 2, Module 2
“¡diviértete!” / Communicating opinions about Film and TV shows. Arranging to go out. Giving excuses to not go out. Describing teenage problems.
Mira Express 2, Module 3
“mis vacaciones” / Methods of travel. Holiday destinations. Holiday activities + past tense. Planning a holiday. Latin America
Students will be asked to keep neat vocabulary and grammar notes in the front of their exercise books, whilst in the back they will complete listening and reading comprehensions, they will also have a support card to help them with writing and translating exercises.
Assessment:
Students are informally, continuously assessed throughout the course in order to monitor their progress and give appropriate feedback to students to move their learning forward. In their Progress Booklets, students are expected to complete translations linked to the topic of study and towards the back, they will have a writing task which brings together the various strands of the topic into an extended paragraph. Once completed, your child’s teacher will mark it and students are expected to re-draft it incorporating the suggestions and feedback given by their teacher. Also at the back of the Progress Booklets, there is a list of questions to help students prepare for speaking tests.
Students are formally assessed in Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing and Translating three times per year on their accumulated knowledge of Spanish. Following these assessments, students will be required to reflect on and respond to their teacher’s feedback.
How can parents help?
Even if you have no knowledge of Spanish, parents can still help by testing their vocabulary and reading the questions from the back of Progress Booklets so that your child can practise their responses.
Support and extra challenge
In order to make learning and revising vocabulary easier and more fun, you can download a programme called “Task magic play” onto your home computer via the following link - There are dozens of vocab lists and reading activities available on this website and on the school’s remote desktop.
– an older website but has some excellent activities which offer challenge and give the correct answers at the end.
- Useful for checking vocabulary for independent writing tasks.