Intent

The National Curriculum for Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) aims to ensure that all children:

• Understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources.
• Are able to speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and that they are continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation.
• Can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt.
• Discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.

A high quality languages education should foster children’s curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. At Quinton Primary School, we are committed to ensuring that competence in another language enables children to interpret, create and exchange meaning within and across cultures. It also helps children develop skills that will open further opportunities later in life. The teaching of French in KS2 provides an appropriate balance of spoken and written language and lays the foundations for further foreign language teaching at KS3.

Implementation

We started a new French curriculum in September 2020 and the course will run over 4 years.  One key aspect is that as the children learn French, lessons will be delivered in French for total immersion.  In the first year, all the children in Year 3, 4, 5 and 6 are introduced to French and will receive a weekly 30 minute lesson throughout their time in KS2. This enables the children to develop early language acquisition skills that facilitate their understanding of the patterns of language and how these differ from, or are similar to, English.

Lessons will initially focus on the skills of speaking and listening with reading and writing being developed over the duration of the course:

• Children are taught to listen attentively to spoken language and respond, gradually building up their speaking and listening and reinforcing that with joining with simple games.
• As the course moves on, children will develop an appreciation of a variety of songs, poems and rhymes in French that are delivered through the curriculum content.
• We use some of the material from the Twinkl French scheme of work.  Some lessons will also focus on French culture and its usage across the world.

Impact

Our MFL curriculum ensures that children develop their knowledge of where different languages, including the range of home languages spoken by the families of the school, as well as French, are spoken in the world. Varied learning experiences ensure that languages are celebrated throughout the school community whilst providing a context for language learning and developing the children’s understanding of different cultures.

Please see our Modern Foreign Languages Policy and Progression Map for more information.