Intent

Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) are an important part of our young people’s education. There are so many clear personal, cultural, social and career benefits in being able to communicate confidently in another language that every child in Key Stage 2 should have the chance to develop their own modern foreign language skills. We want our pupils to be enthusiastic, engaged and challenged and to develop their ability to use and understand another language.

All pupils in Key Stage 2 study French and in lessons, our pupils will gain systematic knowledge of key vocabulary and structures, grammar and phonics of the new language and a better understanding of how these are used by French speakers. We want to develop confident and independent pupils who are not afraid to communicate in a different language.

Implementation

French is taught as a weekly discrete lesson.  This is delivered by the class teacher or another qualified member of staff during PPA. At The Lanes we use the program Salut! It comprises a full set of teaching resources based around the interactive whiteboard.  The resources are presented in a fun and friendly way, to help deliver engaging French lessons to our KS2 pupils. Pupils are taught all four skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing and each of these skill areas are practised, consolidated, reinforced and assessed on a regular basis. There is a positive and innovative approach to target language teaching and we encourage our pupils to use the language for their own purposes.

A new unit is taught each half term and builds on the previous learning.  Units are also chosen to fit in with the half term topic as closely as possible. Lessons contain stories, songs, games and other activities to keep the children as engaged as possible whilst maximising the learning opportunities.

Impact

When our pupils leave The Lanes at the end of Year 6, they should have become more independent in their use of core grammar and linguistics skills. As such, they will be able to adapt a variety of key phrases and express opinions with increasing spontaneity. Pupils across all year groups should be engaged and enjoying their lessons and feeling that they are progressing well. Our French curriculum will ensure all pupils develop key language learning skills, as set out by the national curriculum, as well as a love of languages and learning about other cultures. These are as follows:

• 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

 The National Curriculum in England: Key stages 1 and 2 Framework Document. September 2013

We also use pupil voice to measure and monitor the impact of the French curriculum on pupils.