French Curriculum
Modern Foreign Languages Curriculum Statement
“Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality languages education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. The teaching should enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. It should also provide opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read great literature in the original language. Language teaching should provide the foundation for learning further languages, equipping pupils to study and work in other countries.” National Curriculum
Intent
At St Clare’s Catholic Primary School, it is our intent to deliver an inclusive and high quality Modern Foreign Language (MFL) education, which aims for pupils to understand and respond to the spoken and written language of French. MFL encourages pupils to broaden their vocabulary and enables them to use the skills they have learnt in real life. We provide a languages education that fosters pupils’ curiosity and deepens their understanding of the world. We aim for the pupils at St Clare’s to develop an awareness of the French culture, and to celebrate similarities and differences between our way of life. It is our intention to ensure that by the end of our pupils’ primary education, they have acquired an understanding of both spoken and written French, confidence to speak in French with others and know how important other languages can be in their future.
The National Curriculum for languages aims to ensure that all pupils: ?
- understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources ?
- speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and 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.
Implementation
Our MFL curriculum is designed to develop not only our pupils’ language skills, but also their love of learning a language. All pupils in KS2 have regular French lessons with their class teacher which build on previous learning, thus embedding vocabulary, sentence structure and pronunciation. This allows the pupils to acquire new language, then use and apply it in a range of different scenarios and topics. Pupils are encouraged and supported to develop their speaking and listening skills through conversational work, singing activities and games. As their confidence and skill grows, pupils record their work through pictures, captions and sentences.
Across both Key Stage 1 and 2, the pupils have the opportunity to use French in their daily school life. From EYFS to Year 6, the pupils answer the register and place their lunch order in French, as well as respond to classroom commands. The pupils’ knowledge of the French culture is deepened through MFL days, where each class immerses themselves in the music, traditions, food and language. Through these immersive experiences, the pupils are able to become more confident with the language and apply what they know about the culture of France to their learning.
Impact
What is the impact of our curriculum on the pupils?
- Pupils will be able to communicate with each other in French
- They will be aware that a language has a structure, and that the structure differs from one language to another
- They are able to improve their language through development of the four key skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing.
- They enrich their language learning by developing an understanding of the French culture.