Aims

The MFL curriculum at Staveley CE School has been designed to fulfil the statutory requirements and aims to provide all of our KS2 children with a high quality education in Modern Foreign Languages (MFL). The main language we teach is French. We want to spark our children’s curiosity and interest in learning another language and develop a real love for learning in an enjoyable and stimulating way. Our aim is to develop the confidence and competence of each child in their early acquisition of the French language. We want all children, no matter what their starting point, to have a self-belief that they can learn a foreign language.

 What do we teach in French?

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.

We teach French as our Modern Foreign Language in KS2. Each KS2 class has a weekly French lesson and is taught in a whole-class setting, using the Classroom secrets scheme of work. Where possible, we incorporate French phrases, greetings, songs and counting into our daily routine. The lessons are designed to motivate children and have clear, achievable objectives that incorporate creative activities for different learning styles. French lessons provide a variety of sources to model the language, use games, stories and songs to maximise enjoyment and make as many connections to real life situations as possible. We focus on speaking and listening in Year 3- gradually developing skills in reading and writing in order to lay the foundations for foreign language teaching in KS3. Each lesson, children build on the skills that they have already learnt and develop new ones through a range of fun, exciting and engaging activities such as:

• learning French vocabulary
• asking and answering questions, and following instructions in French
• reinforcing memory with mime and physical actions
• playing games and learning songs
• video clips
• teaching of basic French grammar, sentence structure and spelling patterns
• learning French phonics
• researching and learning about life in France
• writing phrases and sentences

What are the outcomes?

 Our MFL curriculum will ensure all pupils develop key language learning skills set out by the national curriculum, as well as a love of languages and learning about other cultures.

We aim to foster an interest in language learning by introducing children to other languages in a way that is enjoyable and accessible to all pupils. To stimulate and encourage children’s curiosity about language and creativity in experimenting with it. To support oracy and literacy, and in particular develop speaking and listening skills. In learning a foreign language we hope that children will develop an awareness of cultural similarities and differences.

KS2 Long Term Overview – French