MFL

Our Curriculum Intent

At St Peter’s, it is our intention to foster a life-long love of language learning. Although we have chosen French as our modern foreign language, we hope to inspire and motivate our pupils so that they can value the range of other languages spoken in our school community and in their lives ahead. All pupils will be expected to achieve their full potential by being encouraged to meet high expectations and excellent standards in their foreign language learning - the ultimate aim being that they will feel willing and able to continue studying languages beyond key stage 2.

The four key language learning skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing will be taught and all necessary grammar will be covered in an age-appropriate way across the primary phase. This will enable pupils to use and apply their learning in a variety of contexts, laying down solid foundations for future language learning and also helping the children improve overall attainment in other subject areas. In addition, the children will be taught how to look up and research language they are unsure of and they will have a bank of reference materials to help them with their spoken and written tasks going forward.

In addition to acquiring skills and knowledge, we will also strengthen their sense of identity through learning about culture in other countries and comparing it with their own. Where possible, our children can participate in celebrating their accomplishments by joining in with special activities at school e.g., the French café or with other schools e.g., Christchurch “Celebration of languages” days.

Our Curriculum Implementation

We use a scheme of work (Kapow) to plan our lessons from. The lessons are designed with three knowledge strands that run throughout the units with knowledge building cumulatively. These are

Phonics
Vocabulary
Grammar

This is then applied within the skills strands which run throughout each unit in the scheme.

Language comprehension (Listening and reading)
Language production (speaking and writing)

The progression of skills and knowledge shows what skills and knowledge are taught within each year group and how these skills develop to ensure that attainment targets are securely met by the end of Key Stage 2.

Pupils are given opportunities to communicate for practical purposes around familiar subjects and routines. The scheme provides balanced opportunities for communication in both spoken and written French, although in Year 3 the focus is on developing oral skills, before incorporating written French in Year 4 and beyond.

The scheme is a spiral curriculum, with key skills and vocabulary revisited repeatedly with increasing complexity, allowing pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Children are given opportunities to make cross-curricular links and make connections and apply their language skills to other areas of their learning. A range of teaching strategies are incorporated in lessons including independent tasks, paired and group learning which includes role play, language games and language detective work.

Lessons focus on developing what kapow term ‘language detective skills’ and developing an understanding of French grammar, and key vocabulary instead of learning vast amounts of French vocabulary. Lessons can be accessed and enjoyed by all as differentiated guidance is available for every lesson.

Pronunciation is emphasised early on using our mouth mechanics videos to support pupils with phoneme pronunciation in French. There are ways to incorporate French into the classroom environment every day using the ‘during the week’ section which can be found on the kapow website.

The scheme offers CPD for staff to ensure strong subject knowledge to allow a highly effective language curriculum.