Primary Spanish Scheme of Work from Year 2 to Year 6
Our Primary Spanish Scheme of Work provides a complete, progressive curriculum designed to help pupils develop vocabulary, phonics, grammar and communication skills with increasing confidence and independence from Year 2 to Year 6.
Built around 30 carefully sequenced units, the programme combines engaging, ready-to-teach lessons with a cumulative approach to language learning, supporting both specialist and non-specialist primary teachers.
✓ 30 progressive Spanish units from Year 2 to Year 6
✓ Ready-to-teach lessons with audio, songs, interactive activities, stories and worksheets
✓ Structured progression in Spanish phonics, grammar, vocabulary, listening, speaking, reading and writing
Give your pupils a clear language-learning journey that builds year after year.
A Progressive Primary Spanish Curriculum Built for Real Language Learning
The Gramacri Primary Spanish Scheme of Work provides a carefully structured and cumulative language-learning journey from Year 2 to Year 6, combining engaging classroom resources with a clear progression in phonics, vocabulary, grammar and communication.
Our curriculum goes beyond learning isolated lists of words or completing unrelated topics.
Each of the 30 progressive Spanish units builds upon previously acquired linguistic knowledge, helping pupils develop the confidence and skills needed to understand, retrieve, manipulate and communicate in Spanish with increasing independence.
Language learning is organised around eight interconnected curriculum strands:
Phonics and Pronunciation – developing secure sound–spelling knowledge and accurate pronunciation.
Vocabulary – introducing, retrieving and transferring high-frequency language across meaningful contexts.
Grammar – progressing from familiar language patterns to increasingly complex grammatical structures and verb systems.
Listening – understanding spoken Spanish with increasing confidence.
Speaking – developing pronunciation, interaction, sentence construction and independent communication.
Reading – progressing from familiar words to increasingly connected texts and strategic decoding.
Writing – moving from modelled phrases to structured sentences and increasingly independent written outcomes.
Cultural and Global Understanding – exploring Spain, the wider Spanish-speaking world, sustainability and global citizenship through meaningful language learning.
Our teaching approach combines systematic instruction, carefully sequenced practice, cumulative retrieval and purposeful language application.
Pupils encounter new knowledge, practise it through varied activities, revisit it after increasing intervals and learn to transfer it into new communicative situations.
This provides a coherent learning journey, rather than a collection of disconnected language topics.
Five Stages of Curriculum Progression
The Gramacri Spanish curriculum follows five progressive stages, carefully aligned with pupils’ linguistic development from Year 2 to Year 6.
Year 2 – Encounter: Discovering Spanish
Pupils begin by listening, recognising, imitating and reproducing familiar Spanish sounds, words and expressions.
Through songs, colourful illustrations, interactive games, stories and oral activities, children establish their first sound–meaning connections and begin combining familiar vocabulary into short phrases.
Early sentence patterns include Me llamo…, Tengo… años, Soy… and Me gusta…
The focus is on developing sound memory, recognition, pronunciation and confidence in early communication.
Year 3 – Build: Establishing Linguistic Foundations
Children extend their vocabulary and begin recognising how Spanish words and sentences are constructed.
They develop awareness of grammatical gender, singular and plural forms, articles, possessives, familiar verb chunks and simple sentence structures.
Pupils practise asking and answering questions, expressing preferences and combining known vocabulary with increasingly secure grammatical patterns.
Year 4 – Develop: Applying Linguistic Knowledge
Pupils study Spanish phonics systematically and strengthen their understanding of how sounds correspond to written language.
Grammar becomes more explicit, including definite and indefinite articles, gender and number, adjective agreement, prepositions, negative constructions, word order and increasingly developed verb phrases.
Children begin constructing more connected spoken and written responses, using sentence builders, modelled examples and structured practice.
Year 5 – Extend: Manipulating and Transferring Language
Previously learned vocabulary and grammatical structures are revisited and transferred across different topics.
Pupils extend their use of opinions, connectives, possessives, descriptive language and verb structures.
They begin distinguishing infinitives from conjugated forms, recognising grammatical person and applying regular present-tense patterns.
The emphasis moves towards selecting appropriate language, manipulating familiar structures and producing longer responses with less scaffolding.
Year 6 – Apply: Increasing Independence
Pupils retrieve, select and recombine their accumulated phonics, vocabulary and grammatical knowledge to communicate across increasingly demanding contexts.
They apply familiar regular and irregular verb systems, use more complex sentence structures, interpret connected texts, explain and justify ideas, and complete purposeful spoken and written tasks.
By the end of Year 6, children have developed an increasingly transferable linguistic foundation for continued study at Key Stage 3.
Encounter → Build → Develop → Extend → Apply
Our progression is cumulative: previously taught language remains relevant, is deliberately revisited and becomes increasingly useful as pupils advance through the curriculum.
Whole Spanish Curriculum Overview
Primary Spanish Scheme of Work: 30 Progressive Units from Year 2 to Year 6
Our structured Spanish curriculum comprises 30 progressive units, organised into six units per year group from Year 2 to Year 6. Each academic year includes two units per term, followed by a formal assessment point.
This structure creates regular opportunities to introduce new language, retrieve previous knowledge, consolidate learning and monitor pupils’ progress.
| Year Group | Autumn Term | Spring Term | Summer Term |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year 2 |
KS1 Unit 1
Let's Start Spanish!
KS1 Unit 2
First Words in Spanish
|
KS1 Unit 3
Things Around Me
KS1 Unit 4
My Magic World
|
KS1 Unit 5
Under the Sea
KS1 Unit 6
When I Grow Up
|
| Year 3 |
KS2 Unit 7
Greetings & Feelings
KS2 Unit 8
Family Members
|
KS2 Unit 9
Colours & Numbers
KS2 Unit 10
Animals
|
KS2 Unit 11
Food
KS2 Unit 12
Revision & Games
|
| Year 4 |
KS2 Unit 13
All About Me
KS2 Unit 14
Spanish Phonics
|
KS2 Unit 15
My Body
KS2 Unit 16
Clothes & Stories
|
KS2 Unit 17
Daily Routines
KS2 Unit 18
Revision & Games
|
| Year 5 |
KS2 Unit 19
Likes & Dislikes
KS2 Unit 20
My School
|
KS2 Unit 21
Physical Description
KS2 Unit 22
Sports
|
KS2 Unit 23
Family & Environment
KS2 Unit 24
Animals & Biodiversity
|
| Year 6 |
KS2 Unit 25
Global Issues
KS2 Unit 26
Festivals & Celebrations
|
KS2 Unit 27
The Weather
KS2 Unit 28
Getting Around
|
KS2 Unit 29
Holidays
KS2 Unit 30
Around My City
|
Year 2 Spanish Curriculum – Encounter
Introducing Spanish Through Sounds, Images, Stories and Early Communication
Year 2 provides an engaging introduction to Spanish before the statutory language-learning programme begins at Key Stage 2. Across six carefully designed units, children become familiar with Spanish pronunciation, greetings, numbers, colours, everyday vocabulary and simple sentence patterns.
Units 1–6:
Let’s Start Spanish!
First Words in Spanish
Things Around Me
My Magic World
Under the Sea
When I Grow Up
The learning journey begins with greetings and familiar expressions such as Hola, Me llamo… and Tengo… años, allowing pupils to introduce themselves and communicate simple personal information.
Children develop listening and pronunciation skills through songs, audio modelling, repetition and playful classroom interaction.
As the year progresses, pupils begin combining previously learned vocabulary.
For example, in First Words in Spanish, children learn vocabulary relating to pets, fruits and colours, before beginning to describe familiar objects and animals.
In Under the Sea, previously learned colours and numbers are retrieved and applied to sea-creature vocabulary. Pupils also begin using expressions such as Me gusta and No me gusta to communicate simple preferences.
In When I Grow Up, children learn vocabulary relating to occupations and practise sentence structures such as Soy… and ¿Y tú?
Linguistic Progression in Year 2
Phonics: Listening, imitation, sound recognition and pronunciation of familiar Spanish words.
Vocabulary: Greetings, numbers, colours, animals, fruits, everyday objects, sea creatures and occupations.
Grammar: Early exposure to familiar sentence chunks, articles, simple descriptions and recurring verb expressions.
Communication: Recognising, repeating and combining familiar words and short phrases.
Reading and Writing: Connecting familiar spoken language with written forms, copying and adapting simple vocabulary and modelled expressions.
By the end of Year 2, pupils have established early linguistic foundations and developed greater confidence in recognising, reproducing and combining familiar Spanish.
Year 3 KS2 Spanish Scheme of Work – Build
Building Vocabulary, Grammatical Awareness and Complete Sentences
Year 3 establishes the foundations of statutory Key Stage 2 Spanish learning.
Children revisit previously encountered language and develop a more systematic understanding of how Spanish words, phrases and sentences work together.
Units 7–12:
Greetings & Feelings
Family Members
Colours & Numbers
Animals
Food
Revision & Games
In Greetings & Feelings, pupils practise introductions, personal information and familiar questions, developing confidence in short interactions.
Family Members introduces useful structures including Tengo… and No tengo…, allowing pupils to communicate information about siblings and pets.
This also provides an early opportunity to explore masculine and feminine nouns, articles and the relationship between words within a sentence.
In Colours & Numbers, pupils extend numerical knowledge to 31 and use dates, days and months to talk about birthdays.
The Animals unit introduces and revisits hay, allowing pupils to describe what animals are present and combine vocabulary with numbers.
In Food, children develop their use of articles and adjective agreement while expressing increasingly varied opinions:
Me gusta…
No me gusta…
Me encanta…
Odio…
Pupils begin providing simple explanations and building longer sentences.
The final Revision & Games unit revisits language from throughout the year, using songs, games and structured retrieval activities to consolidate previously acquired knowledge.
Linguistic Progression in Year 3
Phonics: Spanish alphabet awareness, recurring sound–spelling patterns and pronunciation practice.
Vocabulary: Personal information, family, animals, food, colours, numbers, dates and familiar everyday contexts.
Grammar: Masculine and feminine nouns, definite and indefinite articles, possessive forms, singular and plural awareness, negative constructions and familiar verb chunks.
Sentence Construction: Combining subjects, verbs, articles, nouns and adjectives in increasingly complete sentences.
Communication: Asking and answering questions, describing familiar topics and expressing preferences.
By the end of Year 3, pupils are increasingly able to retrieve previously learned vocabulary, recognise grammatical patterns and construct supported Spanish sentences.
Year 4 Spanish Curriculum – Develop
Systematic Spanish Phonics, Grammar and Structured Communication
Year 4 marks an important stage in pupils’ linguistic development.
Previously encountered vocabulary and grammatical structures become increasingly explicit, while pupils begin applying their knowledge more systematically to spoken and written Spanish.
Units 13–18:
All About Me
Spanish Phonics
My Body
Clothes & Stories
Daily Routines
Revision & Games
In All About Me, pupils develop personal information, nationality and geographical language, while exploring formal and informal communication in Spanish.
Unit 14 – Spanish Phonics introduces a carefully sequenced, systematic approach to Spanish pronunciation and decoding.
Pupils study the five Spanish vowels, vowel combinations, consonants and characteristic sound–spelling patterns before applying accumulated phonics knowledge to reading activities and connected stories.
In My Body, pupils retrieve earlier phonics knowledge through vocabulary such as ojos and rodillas, while encountering health expressions including ¿Qué te duele?, Me duele… and Me duelen…
Clothes & Stories develops grammatical accuracy through clothing descriptions, adjective agreement, singular and plural forms, and the relationship between nouns and adjectives.
For example:
Una camiseta amarilla – A yellow T-shirt.
Unos zapatos negros – Black shoes.
Children learn that Spanish adjectives often change to agree with the gender and number of the noun.
In Daily Routines, pupils encounter common reflexive verb forms including me levanto and me ducho.
They also practise telling the time and organising language through expressions such as por la mañana, por la tarde and por la noche.
Linguistic Progression in Year 4
Phonics: Systematic grapheme–phoneme correspondence, decoding, sound blending and connected reading.
Grammar: Gender, number, definite and indefinite articles, adjective agreement, prepositions, word order, familiar reflexive verb forms and connectives.
Vocabulary: Nationalities, cities, body parts, clothing, health, daily routines and time.
Sentence Construction: Manipulating familiar sentence patterns, describing actions and sequencing information.
Reading and Writing: Applying phonics to decode increasingly connected texts and writing more developed sentences with growing grammatical accuracy.
By the end of Year 4, pupils have strengthened their understanding of how Spanish sounds, words and grammatical structures combine to communicate meaning.
Year 5 Spanish Curriculum – Extend
Manipulating Grammar, Developing Verb Knowledge and Constructing Longer Sentences
Year 5 builds on established linguistic foundations, with a stronger focus on retrieving, transferring and manipulating previously learned Spanish.
Pupils are increasingly encouraged to select appropriate vocabulary and grammatical structures rather than relying entirely on immediately supplied language.
Units 19–24:
Likes & Dislikes
My School
Physical Description
Sports
Family & Environment
Animals & Biodiversity
In Likes & Dislikes, pupils retrieve familiar opinion expressions and extend their repertoire through phrases such as Me chifla…, Me da igual… and more developed justifications.
They practise connectives including y, pero and sin embargo, allowing them to construct longer and more sophisticated sentences.
This unit also introduces the grammatical concept of the infinitive and the three Spanish verb groups:
-AR, -ER and -IR.
In My School, pupils apply familiar language to describing school subjects, classrooms and facilities, using structures such as hay, no hay and increasingly developed opinions.
Physical Description revisits body parts, colours and adjectives while extending the use of ser and tener, grammatical person, agreement and negative structures.
In Sports, children build on opinion structures and infinitives while developing awareness of regular present-tense verb patterns.
Family & Environment transfers familiar language into environmental contexts and introduces poder + infinitive, enabling pupils to discuss actions and possibilities.
In Animals & Biodiversity, pupils revisit animal vocabulary and extend it through habitats, classification, description and environmental awareness.
Linguistic Progression in Year 5
Grammar: More independent use of gender, number, articles, possessives, adjective agreement, negation and grammatical person.
Verbs: Infinitives, the distinction between infinitive and conjugated forms, familiar irregular verbs, regular present-tense patterns and poder + infinitive.
Syntax: Increasingly accurate word order, sentence expansion, grammatical manipulation and use of connectives.
Vocabulary: Opinions, school, physical description, sport, family, environmental issues, wildlife and habitats.
Communication: Longer descriptions, justified opinions, increased grammatical control and more independent sentence construction.
By the end of Year 5, pupils should be developing the ability to select, manipulate and transfer familiar Spanish across multiple topics with reduced scaffolding.
Year 6 Spanish Curriculum – Apply
Independent Language Application and Preparation for Secondary Spanish
Year 6 represents the final stage of the Gramacri primary Spanish learning journey.
Pupils apply the vocabulary, phonics, grammar and language-learning strategies accumulated throughout the curriculum to increasingly purposeful communicative tasks.
Units 25–30:
Global Issues
Festivals & Celebrations
The Weather
Getting Around
Holidays
Around My City
In Global Issues, pupils explore climate change, pollution, deforestation and environmental responsibility, using cognates, context and previously learned language to interpret increasingly connected Spanish.
Festivals & Celebrations introduces meaningful cultural contexts from across the Spanish-speaking world, encouraging comparison, comprehension and language application.
In The Weather, pupils retrieve geographical vocabulary, countries, seasons and familiar descriptions. They develop weather forecasts and explore comparative language using más… que and menos… que.
Getting Around combines transport vocabulary with previously learned opinions, infinitives and sustainability.
For example:
Me gusta viajar en coche eléctrico porque es sostenible.
Pupils combine an opinion, an infinitive, a transport expression and a justification within a single meaningful sentence.
In Holidays, pupils study regular present-tense -AR verb conjugation, using verbs such as viajar and pasar.
They also practise deber + infinitive to communicate responsible tourism choices.
For example:
Debo ahorrar agua. – I must save water.
The unit culminates in a Sustainable Travel Guide, bringing together destinations, transport, accommodation, time expressions and environmental responsibility.
The final unit, Around My City, revisits hay / no hay, prepositions and positional language, descriptions, opinions, connectives and the regular present-tense -IR verb vivir.
Linguistic Progression in Year 6
Grammar: Strategic application of articles, agreement, possessives, prepositions, grammatical person, negation, comparisons, connectives and familiar verb systems.
Verbs: Regular present-tense conjugations, high-frequency irregular forms, reflexive structures and infinitive constructions.
Syntax: Combining and manipulating familiar structures to communicate more complex information, comparisons, opinions and explanations.
Reading: Interpreting increasingly connected cultural, geographical and environmental texts.
Writing: Producing more independent descriptions, explanations and purposeful written outcomes.
Communication: Selecting and recombining accumulated language across meaningful situations with increasing confidence.
By the end of Year 6, pupils have developed an increasingly secure foundation in Spanish phonics, vocabulary, grammar and communication, supporting their transition to secondary modern foreign languages.
A Systematic Spanish Phonics Programme: From Sounds to Confident Reading
Phonics is a fundamental component of effective Spanish language learning.
The Gramacri Spanish curriculum provides a carefully sequenced approach to phonics, helping pupils understand how sounds and written letters connect and how that knowledge can support accurate pronunciation, decoding and reading comprehension.
Rather than introducing every sound pattern simultaneously, pupils follow a progressive phonics learning sequence, building on previously acquired knowledge before moving towards more complex correspondences.
Stage 1 – The Spanish Alphabet and Sound Awareness
Children begin developing awareness of Spanish sounds through listening, repetition, songs, oral practice and familiar vocabulary. Year 3 extends this learning through explicit alphabet awareness and selected sound–spelling correspondences.
Stage 2 – The Five Spanish Vowels
Pupils systematically study the characteristic sound values of:
A – E – I – O – U
They practise identifying, producing and recognising vowel sounds through carefully selected Spanish words, supported by audio modelling and interactive activities.
Examples include mano, mesa and luna.
Stage 3 – Spanish Vowel Combinations
Once the five vowels have been introduced systematically, pupils explore how adjacent vowels work together within words.
Vocabulary examples include:
bailar
auto
reina
ruido
cielo
suelo
huevo
ciudad
Children develop auditory discrimination and learn to recognise familiar sound combinations within increasingly varied vocabulary.
Stage 4 – Spanish Consonants
Pupils develop understanding of distinctive consonant patterns, including:
Silent H
C and G – context-dependent sound–spelling relationships
J – as in jardín
Ñ – as in araña
R and RR – distinguishing familiar rhotic sounds
Z – recognising the taught pronunciation pattern
B and V – understanding their pronunciation relationship in Spanish
Audio, repetition, word recognition and interactive listening activities help pupils consolidate each set of correspondences.
Stage 5 – Consonant Combinations and Multi-Letter Patterns
Pupils then extend their phonics knowledge through combinations including:
CH – LL – QUE/QUI – GUE/GUI
They also encounter the taught sound values of Y.
Examples include:
chicle
llave
queso
quiero
guerra
guitarra
gallina
camello
Children practise applying these correspondences when recognising, pronouncing, decoding and reading Spanish vocabulary.
Stage 6 – Phonics in Stories and Connected Reading
Previously taught sounds are brought together through listening challenges, interactive quizzes, reading activities and connected texts.
Unit 14 includes the story El pájaro y la ballena, providing opportunities to recognise and apply familiar phonics patterns within a meaningful narrative.
This is an important step: pupils move beyond identifying sounds in isolation and begin using phonics knowledge to interpret connected language.
Phonics Beyond Year 4
Phonics teaching does not end when the dedicated unit finishes.
In Year 5 and Year 6, pupils continue retrieving and applying sound–spelling knowledge to new vocabulary, longer sentences, verb forms, stories and increasingly unfamiliar texts.
The long-term aim is to develop independent decoding, accurate pronunciation and transferable reading strategies, helping children approach new Spanish words with increasing confidence.
Spanish Grammar Progression: From Words and Sentence Patterns to Verb Conjugation and Independent Communication
A strong Primary Spanish Scheme of Work must develop more than vocabulary recognition. Children need to understand how Spanish words relate to one another, how sentences are constructed and how grammatical structures change according to meaning and communicative purpose.
The Gramacri Spanish curriculum introduces grammar progressively, moving from familiar language chunks to increasingly explicit grammatical knowledge and independent manipulation of language.
Grammar is introduced, practised, revisited and applied across multiple units and year groups.
1. Nouns, Gender and Singular–Plural Forms
Pupils begin by recognising familiar nouns and noticing the relationship between words and their grammatical forms.
In Year 3, children develop awareness of masculine and feminine nouns through familiar topics such as family, animals and food.
They progressively learn to distinguish singular and plural forms and apply these features more accurately within sentences.
Examples include:
el gato – the cat
la casa – the house
los gatos – the cats
las casas – the houses
This knowledge is subsequently retrieved when pupils describe clothing, people, animals, school objects and places.
2. Definite and Indefinite Articles
The programme develops pupils’ understanding of Spanish articles and their relationship with grammatical gender and number.
Definite articles: el, la, los, las.
Indefinite articles: un, una, unos, unas.
Rather than teaching articles exclusively as an isolated list, children repeatedly encounter and apply them alongside nouns in meaningful contexts.
For example:
un perro – a dog
una flor – a flower
unos animales – some animals
unas camisetas – some T-shirts
As pupils progress, they select appropriate articles with increasing accuracy and less immediate support.
3. Adjectives and Adjectival Agreement
Children progressively learn that Spanish adjectives may change according to the gender and number of the nouns they describe.
For example:
un gato negro – a black cat
una gata negra – a black female cat
unos zapatos negros – black shoes
unas camisetas amarillas – yellow T-shirts
This progression becomes particularly important in Year 4 Clothes & Stories and Year 5 Physical Description.
Pupils move from recognising familiar adjective forms to selecting and adapting them independently.
4. Spanish Word Order and Sentence Structure
The curriculum progressively introduces pupils to the relationship between nouns, adjectives, verbs and other grammatical elements within Spanish sentences.
For example:
Una camiseta roja.
Children learn that descriptive adjectives commonly follow the noun in Spanish, while also developing awareness that word order depends on the structure and meaning being communicated.
Through modelled language, sentence builders, translation and grammatical manipulation, pupils begin moving from individual words towards increasingly accurate and connected sentences.
5. Possessive Adjectives
Possessives are introduced through familiar personal and family contexts before being revisited across subsequent topics.
Pupils encounter forms such as:
mi, mis, tu, tus, su and sus.
These structures support communication about family, belongings, school and personal descriptions.
For example:
Mi padre – My father.
Mis padres – My parents.
As linguistic demands increase, pupils are encouraged to select familiar possessive structures more independently.
6. Negation and Sentence Polarity
Negative structures develop cumulatively from familiar language such as:
Tengo… / No tengo…
Me gusta… / No me gusta…
Hay… / No hay…
Pupils later manipulate positive and negative sentences across different grammatical contexts, improving their ability to communicate more precisely.
7. Verbs, Grammatical Person and Infinitives
Verb knowledge begins with high-frequency expressions encountered through meaningful communication.
Pupils progressively recognise that Spanish verbs change form according to grammatical person and that the infinitive differs from a conjugated verb.
In Year 5, pupils explicitly encounter the three Spanish infinitive groups:
-AR – ER – IR
Examples include:
hablar – to speak
comer – to eat
vivir – to live
They learn to recognise and use infinitives within familiar structures, including opinions and increasingly developed verb phrases.
8. Present-Tense Regular Verb Conjugation
The curriculum progressively develops understanding of regular present-tense patterns.
In Year 6 Holidays, children systematically explore the regular -AR verb viajar:
| Pronoun | Present Tense – Viajar |
|---|---|
| Yo | viajo |
| Tú | viajas |
| Él / Ella | viaja |
| Nosotros / Nosotras | viajamos |
| Vosotros / Vosotras | viajáis |
| Ellos / Ellas | viajan |
Pupils then transfer their understanding to familiar verbs including pasar.
Later, in Around My City, they explicitly revisit the regular -IR present-tense system through vivir.
The aim is to develop understanding of verb patterns and grammatical person, not simply to memorise conjugation tables.
9. High-Frequency Irregular Verbs
Throughout the programme, pupils encounter and revisit high-frequency irregular forms through meaningful contexts.
These include structures associated with verbs such as:
ser, tener, poder and deber.
Children retrieve and manipulate familiar forms as their knowledge develops.
For example:
Puedo ayudar. – I can help.
Debo ahorrar agua. – I must save water.
Such expressions allow pupils to apply verb knowledge to meaningful situations involving personal information, possibility and responsibility.
10. Reflexive Verbs and Daily Routines
Year 4 Daily Routines introduces common first-person reflexive expressions including:
Me levanto. – I get up.
Me ducho. – I have a shower.
These are practised alongside time expressions and sequencing activities, helping pupils describe familiar daily actions in increasingly connected language.
11. Prepositions, Connectives and Comparisons
As pupils progress, they extend sentences using familiar prepositions and connectives.
Examples include:
y – and
pero – but
porque – because
sin embargo – however
They also practise comparison structures such as más… que and menos… que, and prepositional language associated with transport, places and destinations.
These structures support more sophisticated descriptions, opinions, comparisons and explanations.
12. Spanish Syntax and Sentence Builders
Sentence construction develops across the entire curriculum.
Children progress from familiar modelled expressions towards selecting grammatical elements and combining them into increasingly independent spoken and written sentences.
Early stage:
Me gusta el fútbol.
Developing stage:
Me gusta jugar al fútbol porque es divertido.
Extended application:
Me gusta viajar en coche eléctrico porque es sostenible, pero odio viajar en avión porque es malo para el medioambiente.
These examples illustrate how familiar opinions, infinitives, nouns, adjectives, prepositions and connectives can be recombined to communicate more detailed meanings.
Sentence builders, grammatical models, translation, retrieval and differentiated activities support this development.
As pupils become more secure, scaffolding is gradually reduced, encouraging increasingly independent language selection and grammatical accuracy.
A Cumulative Approach to Spanish Grammar
A grammatical structure is not treated as complete after a single lesson.
Nouns, articles, adjective agreement, verb forms, sentence order and connectives are revisited across different topics and year groups.
Through repeated retrieval and increasingly demanding application, pupils develop a more connected understanding of how Spanish works.
By the end of Year 6, they are better prepared to recognise grammatical patterns, manipulate familiar language and approach secondary Spanish with a stronger linguistic foundation.
Vocabulary and Long-Term Retention
Building Spanish Vocabulary Through Cumulative Retrieval and Meaningful Practice
Vocabulary development is a continuous process throughout the Gramacri Spanish curriculum.
Rather than treating vocabulary as a collection of words to memorise for an individual topic, previously taught language is deliberately revisited, retrieved and transferred into new contexts.
Pupils encounter vocabulary through carefully structured lessons, colourful illustrations, audio, songs, stories, games and interactive activities.
They then revisit the same language through increasingly demanding tasks.
From Recognition to Independent Use
A pupil might initially learn Spanish colours in Year 2 through illustrations, songs and repetition.
In Year 3, those colours are retrieved and combined with numbers, animals and familiar nouns.
In Year 4, pupils use colour vocabulary to describe clothing while applying adjectival agreement.
In Year 5, familiar descriptive language is retrieved and expanded when describing people and animals.
By Year 6, pupils are increasingly expected to select relevant vocabulary independently for more complex descriptions, comparisons and purposeful communication.
Retrieval Across Topics
The same cumulative principle applies to grammatical expressions and sentence patterns.
For example, Me gusta… is introduced through simple preferences before being revisited in contexts such as food, school, hobbies, sport and transport.
The linguistic structure remains familiar while the vocabulary and communicative demands become increasingly complex.
Learning Through Repetition and Application
Our curriculum includes frequent opportunities for retrieval through:
Interactive vocabulary games and quizzes.
Songs, rhythm and oral repetition.
Listening and pronunciation activities.
Questioning and classroom interaction.
Stories and reading comprehension.
Matching, translation and sentence construction.
Dedicated revision and consolidation activities.
Increasingly independent spoken and written tasks.
These activities provide varied opportunities for pupils to recall previously learned language, recognise connections and apply familiar knowledge in new contexts.
The objective is not simply to remember more words, but to make previously learned vocabulary increasingly accessible, transferable and useful for communication.
Four Language Skills
Developing the Four Essential Spanish Language Skills
The Gramacri Primary Spanish Scheme of Work provides a structured progression across listening, speaking, reading and writing. These four skills develop together, supported by increasingly secure knowledge of phonics, vocabulary and grammar.
Listening – From Recognition to Connected Comprehension
Pupils begin by listening to familiar vocabulary, recognising sounds and responding to short modelled expressions.
As they progress, they interpret increasingly connected spoken Spanish, identify key information and apply contextual and grammatical knowledge to support understanding.
Embedded audio, songs, listening challenges, stories and classroom interaction provide regular listening opportunities.
Speaking – From Imitation to Independent Communication
Speaking begins through imitation, repetition and short rehearsed exchanges.
Pupils progressively develop the ability to ask and answer questions, describe familiar contexts, express opinions and construct longer responses.
In later years, children manipulate familiar grammatical structures, justify ideas and communicate with increasing confidence and independence.
Reading – From Words to Connected Spanish Texts
Reading progresses from recognising familiar written words to interpreting complete sentences and connected texts.
Explicit phonics instruction helps pupils develop decoding strategies, while cognates, illustrations, context and grammatical knowledge support comprehension.
Stories, cultural texts, environmental topics and reading activities provide opportunities to retrieve and apply acquired linguistic knowledge.
Writing – From Modelled Phrases to Purposeful Texts
Writing begins with copying and adapting familiar vocabulary and expressions.
Pupils then progress to sentence construction, translation, grammatical manipulation and increasingly independent written responses.
In the later stages, they organise familiar language into connected descriptions, explanations and purposeful written outcomes.
By the end of Year 6, pupils should be increasingly able to draw on their accumulated linguistic knowledge across all four skills, supporting continued language learning at secondary school.
Songs, Videos and Stories
Spanish Songs, Educational Videos and Stories That Make Learning Memorable
Engagement and effective language practice work together throughout the Gramacri Spanish curriculum.
Our platform incorporates educational songs, videos, colourful illustrations, stories and interactive activities designed to make Spanish accessible, enjoyable and meaningful for primary pupils.
These resources are integrated into the teaching sequence to support pronunciation, comprehension, vocabulary retrieval and repeated language practice.
Learning Spanish Through Songs
Songs provide opportunities for children to hear and rehearse familiar vocabulary through rhythm, repetition and memorable language patterns.
Examples from our Spanish teaching resources include:
Buenos días – greetings and familiar classroom expressions.
¿Cómo te llamas? – names and personal introductions.
¿Tienes hermanos? – family vocabulary and familiar questions.
Colores, colores, vamos a jugar – colours and pronunciation.
Los Números en Español – number recognition and recall.
Los días de la semana – days of the week.
Los Meses del año – months and calendar vocabulary.
Mi Familia – family relationships and descriptions.
Tengo, Tengo, Tengo – practising recurring expressions through repetition.
Las Criaturas Marinas – sea-creature vocabulary and listening.
Las criaturas mágicas – imaginative vocabulary and pronunciation.
Songs can be revisited across lessons and units, giving pupils additional opportunities to retrieve language from memory and practise familiar sounds.
Engaging Stories and Connected Language
Stories provide meaningful opportunities to apply vocabulary and phonics within connected Spanish.
Examples from the programme include:
Los Cuatro Amigos – a Year 3 story supporting animal vocabulary and phonics.
El pájaro y la ballena – a Year 4 story used to consolidate systematic Spanish phonics.
The Sun and the Wind – a Year 6 weather-related story supporting comprehension and comparative language.
Storytelling helps pupils encounter words and grammatical structures in context rather than as isolated items.
Colourful Visuals and Meaningful Interaction
Rich illustrations, characters, visual prompts and classroom activities help pupils connect Spanish language with meaning.
Interactive games encourage active participation, questioning, retrieval and repeated use of language.
Together, these resources create multiple opportunities for children to listen, practise, retrieve and apply Spanish, supporting a curriculum where engagement is combined with clear learning objectives.
Hundreds of Interactive Resources
Spanish Teaching Resources for Primary Schools: Hundreds of Worksheets and Interactive Activities
The Gramacri Primary Spanish Platform brings together a structured curriculum and an extensive collection of classroom teaching resources.
Across the programme, teachers can access hundreds of worksheets and interactive activities, supported by engaging visuals, educational songs, stories, audio files and carefully sequenced lesson presentations.
Resources are organised within the curriculum, reducing the need to search for separate teaching materials or assemble lessons from unrelated sources.
Interactive Activities Embedded in Lessons
Many interactive activities are integrated directly into the lesson presentations, allowing teachers to introduce, practise, retrieve and consolidate Spanish within the same teaching environment.
Activities include vocabulary recognition, interactive games, matching, quizzes, listening challenges, sentence construction and grammatical practice.
Visually Rich Teaching Presentations
Colourful illustrations, characters and visual prompts help pupils connect language with meaning.
These visuals support vocabulary recognition, comprehension, oral interaction and participation, particularly when pupils are encountering new language.
Worksheets for Practice and Consolidation
Worksheets provide further opportunities to practise key vocabulary, phonics, grammar, reading comprehension and written Spanish.
Activities develop from highly supported recognition tasks towards increasingly independent sentence construction, translation and grammatical manipulation.
Spanish Audio and English-Language Support
Embedded audio provides pronunciation models for vocabulary and expressions.
English translations, clear instructions and answer guidance help teachers understand the language being taught and support confident classroom delivery.
Revision, Games and Repeated Practice
Dedicated Revision & Games units in Year 3 and Year 4 complement retrieval activities used throughout the curriculum.
These provide opportunities to revisit accumulated language through interactive games, questioning, challenges and varied practice.
Everything Organised Around a Progressive Curriculum
The resources are not simply an extensive collection of activities.
They support a carefully planned learning journey in which pupils encounter new linguistic knowledge, practise it, retrieve previous learning and progressively apply Spanish with greater accuracy and independence.
Ready-to-teach resources, structured progression and engaging classroom activities — brought together in one Spanish learning platform.
Differentiation, Challenge and SEND
Adaptive Spanish Teaching: Three Levels of Challenge for Different Learning Needs
Primary classrooms include pupils with different starting points, learning needs and levels of confidence.
The Gramacri Spanish curriculum supports adaptive teaching through carefully structured activities, visual resources, audio modelling, sentence builders and differentiated tasks.
Our approach is designed to maintain ambitious learning objectives while adjusting the support and challenge pupils receive.
Three Differentiated Challenge Levels
Gramacri provides three colour-coded activity levels:
Green – Greater Support
Activities can provide additional modelling, vocabulary banks, visual prompts, supplied choices and sentence frames.
These supports help pupils recognise familiar language, practise new structures and develop confidence.
Orange – Developing Independence
Activities can reduce scaffolding and require greater retrieval, sentence construction and independent selection of language.
Pupils apply familiar knowledge with increasing confidence and accuracy.
Red – Greater Challenge
Activities can encourage more independent responses, grammatical manipulation, extended sentence construction, translation and open-ended communication.
Pupils are challenged to transfer familiar linguistic knowledge into more demanding contexts.
The three levels represent different degrees of support and challenge, not fixed pupil ability groups.
Supporting Pupils with SEND
Visual prompts, audio modelling, repetition, structured interaction, vocabulary support and familiar learning routines provide multiple ways to access Spanish.
Pupils can practise receptive language skills before progressing towards more demanding spoken and written production.
Maintaining High Expectations
Differentiation does not require pupils to follow entirely separate language curricula.
Children can work towards shared learning objectives through appropriately adapted tasks, with scaffolding gradually reduced as their knowledge becomes more secure.
The aim is to support access, participation, progression and increasing independence for every learner.
Automatic Assessment Tracker
Spanish Assessment and Automatic Progress Tracking
Assessment is an essential component of the Gramacri Primary Spanish Scheme of Work.
A progressive curriculum requires clear opportunities to evaluate what pupils know, what they can retrieve and how independently they can apply their linguistic knowledge.
Our approach combines ongoing formative assessment, three formal assessment points per academic year and an Automatic Assessment Tracker.
Assessment Throughout the Learning Journey
Teachers can monitor understanding through regular classroom activities, including:
Vocabulary recall and retrieval.
Listening and pronunciation tasks.
Questioning and spoken interaction.
Reading comprehension.
Translation and sentence construction.
Grammatical discrimination and manipulation.
Interactive games and independent written activities.
These provide evidence of pupils’ developing knowledge and help identify areas requiring consolidation or further challenge.
Three Formal Assessment Points Every Year
Each year group includes three formal assessment points:
Assessment 1 – Autumn Term
Assessment 2 – Spring Term
Assessment 3 – Summer Term
These assessments follow the curriculum blocks and provide opportunities to evaluate cumulative retention and application.
Assessment demands become progressively more challenging across Year 2 to Year 6, reflecting the development of vocabulary, phonics, grammar, reading comprehension, sentence construction and increasingly independent written Spanish.
Automatic Assessment Tracker
Gramacri provides an Automatic Assessment Tracker designed to make the interpretation of assessment performance clearer and more efficient.
The tracker automatically calculates assessment performance and displays colour-coded results:
Green – stronger performance against the assessment criteria.
Orange – performance indicating that further consolidation may be useful.
Red – performance indicating a greater need for additional support or intervention.
This visual system helps teachers identify patterns in assessment performance and plan appropriate follow-up teaching.
Assessment That Informs Future Learning
Assessment is not simply a record of marks.
It supports decisions about retrieval, consolidation, scaffolding and further challenge.
Combined with the progressive curriculum and differentiated teaching resources, the Automatic Assessment Tracker helps teachers respond to pupils’ developing linguistic knowledge and monitor progress over time.
Supporting Non-Specialist Teachers
A Primary Spanish Scheme of Work for Specialist and Non-Specialist Teachers
Teaching Spanish confidently requires clear explanations, reliable pronunciation support, structured planning and appropriate classroom resources.
Gramacri is designed to support both specialist Spanish teachers and primary teachers who do not have extensive prior language-teaching experience.
Clear Curriculum Sequencing
The programme provides a progressive learning journey from Year 2 to Year 6, helping teachers understand how vocabulary, phonics, grammar and communication skills develop over time.
Ready-to-Teach Lesson Presentations
Structured lesson presentations bring together teaching content, interactive activities, audio, visuals, worksheets and practice opportunities.
English Translations and Answer Guidance
English-language support helps teachers understand key vocabulary, grammatical structures, classroom instructions and expected answers.
Embedded Spanish Audio
Pronunciation models help teachers and pupils hear the target language, supporting more confident listening and oral practice.
Visual Resources, Stories and Games
Colourful illustrations, stories, songs and interactive activities provide accessible ways to introduce and reinforce Spanish.
Differentiated Activities
Three challenge levels help teachers adapt support and task demands according to pupils’ developing knowledge.
Assessment and Progress Monitoring
Planned assessment points and an Automatic Assessment Tracker support teachers in interpreting results and identifying areas for consolidation.
Gramacri combines specialist curriculum design with practical classroom resources, helping teachers focus more on delivering lessons and less on creating materials from scratch.
Spanish Culture, Geography, Sustainability and Global Citizenship
Language learning is also an opportunity for children to explore the world beyond their immediate environment.
The Gramacri Spanish curriculum integrates cultural and intercultural learning across meaningful topics, encouraging pupils to develop language knowledge alongside curiosity, comparison and wider global understanding.
Spain and the Spanish-Speaking World
Pupils explore Spain, its cities and geographical features, including Madrid, while developing awareness of Spanish-speaking countries around the world.
Maps, flags, geographical information and cultural activities provide opportunities to connect language learning with geography.
Festivals and Celebrations
Year 6 pupils explore Spanish-speaking traditions including:
Las Fallas – Valencia, Spain.
La Tomatina – Buñol, Spain.
Día de Muertos – Mexico.
Spanish Christmas traditions – including food, customs and celebrations.
These contexts encourage cultural comparison and provide opportunities for reading, listening and vocabulary development.
Spanish Food and Everyday Life
Food-related learning introduces traditional dishes, preferences, healthy diets and sustainable choices.
School-related topics allow pupils to compare aspects of school life in England and Spain.
Animals and Biodiversity
Pupils explore animal habitats, classification and biodiversity while applying descriptive language and previously learned vocabulary.
Environmental Education
Environmental topics are developed across the curriculum, including family sustainability, biodiversity, climate change, pollution and deforestation.
Sustainable Transport and Tourism
In Year 6, pupils apply Spanish to transport choices, environmental responsibility and sustainable holidays.
They use previously acquired language to describe destinations, evaluate travel choices and develop purposeful projects such as a Sustainable Travel Guide.
These themes provide meaningful contexts for applying Spanish vocabulary, grammar and communication skills while supporting wider cultural and environmental understanding.
Transition to Secondary
Preparing Pupils for Secondary Spanish: Strong Foundations for Key Stage 3
The final objective of the Gramacri Primary Spanish Scheme of Work is not simply to complete 30 units.
It is to help pupils develop a transferable foundation in Spanish that they can continue building upon at secondary school.
By the end of Year 6, pupils have opportunities to develop knowledge and skills in:
Phonics and Pronunciation
Recognising and applying Spanish sound–spelling relationships when speaking, reading and decoding unfamiliar vocabulary.
Vocabulary Retrieval
Recalling and recombining previously learned language across different contexts.
Grammatical Understanding
Recognising and applying familiar grammatical structures, including gender, number, articles, adjective agreement, possessives, negation and verb patterns.
Verb Knowledge
Understanding infinitives, grammatical person, regular present-tense patterns and high-frequency irregular forms.
Sentence Construction
Using sentence builders, grammatical knowledge and connectives to develop increasingly accurate and connected language.
Listening and Speaking
Understanding spoken Spanish and communicating through questions, descriptions, opinions and increasingly extended responses.
Reading and Writing
Interpreting connected texts and producing increasingly independent written Spanish.
Independent Language-Learning Strategies
Using phonics, cognates, context, grammatical clues and prior knowledge to approach less familiar language.
The curriculum is designed to help children progress from highly supported early language learning towards greater confidence, accuracy and independence.
A coherent primary Spanish curriculum provides a stronger foundation for continued language learning at Key Stage 3.
Try the Gramacri Spanish Platform
Discover a Complete Primary Spanish Curriculum and Ready-to-Teach Platform
Bring structured Spanish language learning into your primary school with Gramacri.
Our platform combines 30 progressive Spanish units, hundreds of worksheets and interactive activities, systematic phonics, cumulative grammar progression, educational songs, stories, differentiated challenges and automatic assessment tracking.
Everything is designed around a carefully sequenced curriculum that supports teaching, practice, retrieval and increasingly independent communication.
Explore our Spanish teaching resources and discover how the programme supports effective language learning from Year 2 to Year 6.
No payment card required to begin your free trial.
Simple Pricing for the Whole School
14-Day Free Trial
- Full access to explore the platform
- Choose one language: French or Spanish
- Explore lessons, activities, audio and curriculum content
- No obligation
- No bank card required
1 Language
- Choose French or Spanish
- Full access to the selected language curriculum
- Access for the whole school
- Available to all pupils
- Ready-to-teach lessons and resources
- Phonics, grammar, vocabulary and assessment
- Audio, songs, worksheets and engaging activities
- 12 months of access
2 Languages
- Full access to both French and Spanish
- Complete curriculum content for both languages
- Access for the whole school
- Available to all pupils
- Ready-to-teach lessons and resources
- Phonics, grammar, vocabulary and assessment
- Audio, songs, worksheets and engaging activities
- 12 months of access
Primary Spanish Scheme of Work FAQs
Is Gramacri a complete Primary Spanish Scheme of Work?
Yes. Gramacri provides 30 progressive Spanish units from Year 2 to Year 6, combining structured vocabulary, phonics, grammar, listening, speaking, reading, writing, cultural learning and assessment.
Does the programme meet the requirements of the KS2 Languages National Curriculum?
The Year 3–6 programme is designed around the key linguistic expectations of the National Curriculum for Languages in England, including pronunciation, vocabulary, grammatical understanding, listening, speaking, reading, writing and developing language independence.
Are both KS1 and KS2 included?
Both Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 are included. Gramacri’s Spanish curriculum currently starts in Year 2 and continues through to Year 6, covering both Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. Year 2 gives pupils an engaging early introduction to Spanish , while Years 3–6 build progressively through phonics, vocabulary, grammar and the four language skills. Six additional Year 1 units are also coming soon.
Can Gramacri Spanish resources be used at KS3?
Many of the resources can also be used effectively at Key Stage 3, although the Gramacri Spanish Scheme of Work is designed primarily for primary schools. The programme includes Spanish phonics, vocabulary, sentence structures, opinion language, regular and irregular verbs, present-tense grammar, reading, writing, listening, speaking and cultural content that also feature within early secondary Spanish. These resources can be particularly useful for consolidation, retrieval, intervention, transition from KS2 to KS3 or classes with different starting points.
Does Gramacri provide a systematic Spanish phonics programme?
Yes. Gramacri provides a carefully sequenced Spanish phonics programme that develops from early sound awareness and the Spanish alphabet to systematic vowel instruction, vowel combinations, consonants and multi-letter sound patterns.
Our dedicated Year 4 Spanish Phonics unit consolidates this knowledge through audio modelling, interactive activities, listening challenges and connected reading, including the story El pájaro y la ballena.
Phonics knowledge is then retrieved and applied throughout Years 5 and 6 to support increasingly accurate pronunciation, decoding and independent reading.
Are regular and irregular Spanish verbs included?
Yes. Pupils encounter high-frequency irregular verb forms throughout the programme, while regular present-tense conjugation and grammatical person become increasingly explicit in later years.
Does the programme include sentence builders?
Yes. Sentence builders, visual prompts, grammatical models and structured practice help pupils construct increasingly accurate and independent Spanish sentences.
Are worksheets and interactive Spanish activities included?
Yes. The platform includes hundreds of worksheets and interactive activities to support vocabulary, phonics, grammar, comprehension, retrieval and classroom engagement.
Can non-specialist teachers deliver the lessons?
Yes. Ready-to-teach presentations include embedded audio, English translations, visual support, activities and answer guidance to help teachers deliver Spanish more confidently.
Does Gramacri provide differentiated activities?
Yes. Green, Orange and Red differentiated activities offer three levels of support and challenge, helping teachers adapt tasks to pupils’ learning needs.
How does Gramacri assess pupils' progress?
The curriculum includes ongoing formative assessment and three planned formal assessment points each year. An Automatic Assessment Tracker also calculates assessment performance and presents colour-coded results.
Does the curriculum prepare pupils for secondary Spanish?
The curriculum develops cumulative knowledge of Spanish phonics, vocabulary, grammar, verb structures and communication, helping establish a foundation for continued language learning at Key Stage 3.
Can schools try Gramacri before subscribing?
Yes. Schools and teachers can explore the Spanish programme through a free 14-day trial, with no payment card required to begin.
How much does the Gramacri Primary Spanish Platform cost?
The Spanish whole-school subscription costs £150 per year and provides access to the Spanish curriculum and associated teaching resources for 12 months.
