EDEXCEL International GCSE in Spanish Qualification

Examination board EDEXCEL

Spanish 4SPO Specification

We have chosen the Spanish International GCSE with our students in mind. It is envisaged that many of them will move on to working with International companies and this qualification will be better recognised internationally.

Key features and benefits of the qualification

This qualification has been developed:

• to provide breadth, stretch and challenge.
• to enable students to show what they know, understand and can accomplish within a clearly defined list of topic and sub-topic areas.
• to provide a single tier of entry which tests the whole ability range
• to provide written assessment in listening, reading and writing skills
• to provide assessment of spoken language
• to provide 100% external assessment
• to enable progression to GCE AS and Advanced GCE level, and other equivalent qualifications.

Vision

The Spanish department at the University Technical College aims:

• To create an environment where students enjoy learning Spanish and foster a lifelong love for the Spanish language and culture.
• To constantly reflect on Pedagogy to improve the way all learners’ particular needs are met.
• Regular monitoring of books and assessment to give students high quality and regular feedback to ensure that every student knows how to make progress.
• To get the highest possible achievement in all its forms.and a sense of success for all students.

Course Overview

The International GCSE in Spanish is made up of three compulsory papers that test the four language skills. Each paper is taken at the end of the course.

Students will take the The EDEXCEL International GCSE Spanish externally assessed examination at the end of year 11. The content of the course will be divided in five modules; Three will be covered in year 10 and two in year 11.

Year 10 Year 11

Although the final external exam will be taken in June 2016 students will be formatively and summatively assessed throughout both years 10 and 11.

Progressive summative termly tests will take place:

Year 10 December ( Listening and Writing) Year 11 November ( Listening and writing)

March ( Speaking) February ( Speaking)

June ( Past exam) May ( Past exam)

The student’s level of language competence will be assessed according to the National Curriculum Levels for Modern Languages . To reach level 6, the equivalent to grade C, students should be able to understand and talk about events taken place in the present, past and future and understand longer written passages about the past, present and future. Our plan is to introduce the Future Tense in December so, although there will be opportunities to progress more quickly so it will be difficult for a beginner of Spanish in year 10 to get grade C before then.

Materials

Our scheme of work and lessons are planned around the EDEXCEL International GCSE certificate in Spanish textbook but the students will not have a copy of the book. Instead, the students will have access in Google Classroom to mini Power Point presentation lessons with extracts from EDEXCEL textbook and others like Mira AQA GCSE Foundation and Higher textbooks, linguistic structures and grammar explanations and activities. In this way the students have the opportunity to go through the lesson main points as many times as they need. In Google Classroom students will also find information and links to linguistic and cultural sites of interest

Each student will have a writing book to record the linguistic and grammar points seen through the lessons, vocabulary and activities to access quickly for information.and reference. In the book the student will record their current level and future targets to allow them to assess their own progress clearly. The teacher will assess and mark the books regularly to guide and help each student to success.

Resources

• Students should look at the relevant Power Point presentation and other materials in Google Classroom as many times as needed to make sure he/she has understood what has been covered in each of the lesson to be able to fulfil the tasks set in class or ask for further explanation in the next lesson.
• Students will be asked to further practise the grammar, vocabulary and linguistic structures seen in the lesson with activities at www.languagesonline.org.uk .

Other useful sites to learn or practise Spanish:

• BBC Languages Mi Vida Loca http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/

Lingohut http://lingohut.com/