CURRICULUM
Polish
Polish Curriculum Intent
Modern Foreign Languages empowers students to communicate successfully in the target language. They learn to appreciate the importance of languages in a rapidly changing global society and the diverse culture and customs of others. Our curriculum embeds and builds upon prior knowledge, raising students’ confidence to become successful linguists and develop a life-long love of languages.
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Key STRANDS
Listening
Students learn to understand both detail and the gist of a variety of texts through different types of questions, ranging from multiple-choice to more open-ended responses. By Year 11, students are able to comprehend more complex spoken texts and respond confidently.
Students develop skills to pick out synonyms, understand the gist of a text, and tackle more complex questions, including identifying positive and negative viewpoints, answering multiple-choice questions, and responding to open-ended prompts. Students are also trained to spot distractors, helping them choose accurate answers from a given text.
Reading and Translation
Speaking
Students develop their writing in increasingly complex language and grammar structures. Students develop being able to engage in extended conversations, discussing a variety of topics with confidence and fluency.
Students develop their writing more complex texts that reflect a wide range of vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structures. By Year 11, students are proficient in writing using multiple tenses.
Writing & Translation
Grammar
Grammar is taught both indirectly, within the context of language learning, and directly when appropriate. Students deepen their understanding of grammar, including more complex structures like the conditional and imperfect tenses, preparing them for the demands of GCSE Polish.
Curriculum Structure
Our Polish curriculum is designed to meet the needs of our students and prepares students for GCSE exams by progressively developing key skills, vocabulary, and grammar. The curriculum is structured to ensure a smooth progression in listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation skills, with topics revisited in increasing complexity. The skills are interleaved throughout the curriculum and the grammatical skills are spiralled in years 10 and 11. By Year 11, students are confident in using the Polish language in a wide range of contexts, ready for their GCSE exams and future language studies.
Year 10
Culture
Students are introduced to the importance of studying a language and the transferable skills they will learn as well as to communicate in Polish. We introduce celebrations such as how Christmas/Easter/Polish Independence Day are celebrated in Poland but also each week students learn about Polish history, traditions and customs.
Linguistic introduction
We look at phonics and how letters and letter combinations are pronounced this is ongoing through the year to give students a good understanding when listening and speaking in the TL.
Self Identity and relationships with others
Students study how to greet others, introduce themselves, give their age and birthday and understand others. They learn how to describe their physical and character description. Students look at being able to describe ideal partners. This requires them to develop their understanding of the conditional tense to say ‘would’. They learn about Polish wedding traditions.
Family
In this topic, students will learn extended family members and animals. They learn how to describe family members and how to talk about relationships and friendships. Furthermore, culturally, students will be introduced to Polish celebrations such as Grandmother’s Day.
House
Students study how to describe their home, and what they like to do in there. The conditional tense is introduced enabling students to describe their dream home.
Town
Students learn how to describe places they know themselves in England. Over the course of Year 10, students are equipped with transactional language to use in practical situations starting with directions in this topic.
Food and Health
Students learn about food and vocabulary used when ordering food in restaurants. This is a good opportunity to talk about the health starting with food and then moving onto healthy lifestyles. We also then continue this with transactional learning what to say in a doctors or pharmacy.
School
Students continue to be able to talk about their lives by learning the key vocabulary to describe their life at school; what they study, their school day, their favourite subjects, their uniform, and the school building. Students are introduced to cultural differences between the school day, rules and traditions in Poland and England.
Holidays
This topic is a great opportunity for students to further learn about Poland; and the most popular places to visit while on holiday in Poland. Students learn how to describe their holiday covering subtopics such as transport, accommodation, directions, festivals and activities as well as the future tense.
Year 11
Media and technology
This topic debates the advantages and disadvantages of technology and the use of technology within school. Students develop being able to refer to the internet, it’s importance to young people and society as well as their preferences advantages and disadvantages. They then go on to discuss mobile technology, computers, phones and tablets and reasons for personal use including frequence, apps, platforms, advantages and disadvantages.
Healthy living and lifestyle
Students give preferences for food and drink moving then to attitudes towards fast-food, smoking, drugs alcohol and the consequences. They also develop their ability to discuss ways to keep a healthy body and mind.
Education and work
Students express extended opinions on school subjects, school rules and to discuss past school life at primary school. Students look forward to what they would like to do after school. Future plans such as college, apprentices, university, work experience, gap year and jobs are discussed, and students are helped to articulate their hopes. Students look at complex structures to say before doing…. after having done… and the subjunctive.
The environment and where people live
Describe local environment, including environmental issues refer to activities to help protect the area in past present and future
Global and social issues
Students learn about global issues such as drought, flooding as well as recapping social issues and the problems that ensue.
Culture
Students continue to learn about Polish celebrations such as Wianki/All Saints ‘Day/Andrzejki are celebrated in Poland but also each week students learn about Polish history, traditions and customs.
