NEW Teaching & Learning Resources at KS3 based on the NEW 2024 GCSE

As you may know, I started a new teaching job in September as Head of MFL at Princes Risborough School. I has been a very exciting but also tough term, as we have been working on revamping our SoWs to reflect the changes in the new GCSE, but especially, to boost numbers of students choosing a language at GCSE.  To understand the context of our school, Princes Risborough is a comprehensive school in a Grammar school county, Buckinghamshire.  

Most of our students are not naturally drawn to studying languages to GCSE level and definitely MFL is one of the hardest subjects to teach in the school. We agreed that if we wanted to boost numbers at GCSE, as MFL is not a compulsory subject, we had to make students experience success and focus our curriculum on achieving fluency at the end of their language learning, in such a way that they would not want to stop their language journey at KS3 but take it further up to Y11. 

To experience success we would deliver a rich curriculum embedded on high expectations as from Y7, underpinned by the concept that Less is More and our big intent: Languages, a life skill to achieve. We would only study a topic each term at KS3, that is, only 3 topics in Y8 and 3 topics in Y9. Y7 currently carry out a carousel of French/Spanish and choose a language to continue studying in Y8/9 and hopefully up to Y11, so they only get 6 months of each language exposure.  This will be changing next academic year when they will study French or Spanish as from Y7. 

The topics and resources I have developed for Spanish are based on the  new MFL GCSE vocabulary lists, mainly for AQA. I am creating everything from scratch so it is a job in progress! 

Below you can find the topics we decided to teach and the resources for each term. We do not use a textbook, so our SoWs are based entirely on the new GCSE vocabulary lists and our own Sentence Builders. 

The slides resources have direct links to our new Sentence Builders for Spanish. To create these from scratch, I have used the Sentence Builders site, which has proved unvaluable in this process. Direct links to the interactive resources for the Sentence Builders site are in the resources themselves, but you can only access them if you have an account. However, I have also included PDF versions of the Sentence Builders on some of the topics, so you can see what our activities are based on. 

Our school is a Google School so all the resources are in Slides. Students bring their laptops to lessons and we use GoogleClassroom, so the resources you will see below are meant to be used by the teacher, but also by students, who can write directly on the slides, as if they were worksheets, with many interactive links to other resources via WordWall, Flippity, Wheel of Names or Genially.  I hope the activities/lessons are useful!

Year 7

Half-Year Spanish- Me and my family.   

This resource includes: How are you? How were you yesterday? What's your name? Numbers up to 20. How old are you? How many siblings you have? What's your brother/sister name? Where do you live? (Including, where you want to live and where you used to live). Introduces key verbs such as estoy, estaba, tengo, tiene, tenía, vivo, vivía, quiero vivir.

Slides Resource on Personal information about me and my family

Year 8

Term 1- Free Time

This resources includes: Reference to present, past and future via the use of me gusta, suelo, antes me gustaba, antes solía, me gustaría, the whole present tense and lots of reasons to justify choice of free time activities. It focusses on vocabulary regarding free time activities and sports as per new GCSE Vocabulary lists.

Slides Resource on Free Time including the Present Tense

Term 2- Where I live-My House

This resource includes: Description of where you live making reference to present/ past and future via the use of vivo, antes vivía, me gustaría vivir. It focusses on the description of your house and activities you and your family do at home. It revises the Present Tense and many of the activities studied during term 1. It introduces me gustaría que mi casa fuera/tuviera, hay, habia, tiene, tenía. 

Slides Resource on Where I live (my house) 

Term 3- Holidays-Present Tense

This resource includes: Description of holidays and travelling via the use of verbs, from the new GCSE vocabulary lists in the Present Tense and via structures such as, suelo, puedo, me gusta.  

Slides Resource on Holidays in the Present Tense. 

Year 9

Term 1- Holidays-Past Tense

This resource includes: Description of holidays and travelling focussing on the past tense. It recycles the vocabulary learned in Y8 on Free Time and Holidays in the present tense.

Slides Resource on Holidays in the Past Tense 

Term 2- My town or village

This resource includes: Description of the area where you live making reference to present/past and future via the use of me gustaría que mi ciudad fuera/tuviera and había/tenía. From a cultural point of view it makes reference to Madrid as a city to visit. The unit focusses entirely on the new GCSE vocabulary lists. The resource includes a virtual Treasure Hunt around Madrid using Google Earth.  

Slides Resource on My town-Tourism  

Term 3- Festivals and Traditions

This resource includes some video footage of the most well known and original festivals in Spain, Las Fallas, Los Sanfermines, La Tomatina and La Semana Santa. It studies in detail a description of La Tomatina in the present, past and future (Voy a + infinitive) linked to the topic of Holiday activities and Free Time. By the end of the unit, students are required to write a Blog about La Tomatina and their experiences.    

Slides Resources on Festivals and Traditions