Language – Culture – Communication
Intent
We aim to stimulate children’s curiosity about languages and cultures from around the world, with a particular focus on French language and culture. We aim to liberate our children from insularity and provide an opening to other cultures which will provide their foundation for learning further languages, equipping them to study and work in other countries.
- We aim that our children will understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources.
- Our children will express their ideas by speaking with increasing accuracy, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation.
- We will teach our children to write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learned.
Our children will discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.
Implementation
At KS1, the children learn about the French language and culture in an informal fun way through songs, games and creative activities.
We are fortunate to have two specialist MFL teachers within our staff and can offer the children French or German throughout Key Stage 2. Currently at KS2, where a foreign language is statutory, French is taught following the North Yorkshire Scheme of Work. Here children extend their oracy skills and develop literacy skills as well in a variety of ways including songs, games and roleplay language days. MFL is taught in blocks throughout the year, so that children achieve depth in their learning. Teachers have identified the key knowledge and skills of each topic and consideration has been given to ensure progression across topics throughout each year group. Our curriculum has been sequenced to enable pupils to gradually widen their grasp of the spoken and written French language. As far as possible, cultural knowledge and oracy skills are consolidated and extended in other areas of the curriculum too, such as taking part in regular exercise programmes to incorporate the French language with movement. 5-a-day Fitness: Disco en français can be accessed easily on Youtube for your reference.
Lessons also expose children to francophone countries and culture, allowing them to develop an understanding for the wider world, as well as allowing them to relate French language and culture to their own.
Impact
Our curriculum allows our children to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and writing.
Learning another’s language brings cohesion to societies and Methodism is about connections. Wherever they live or travel, our children, as able communicators, will be enabled to deepen their understanding of the world and our languages curriculum will provide our children with many opportunities within our local and global communities.
We use our progression grid to monitor and assess pupils learning, checking that they are learning at the expected standard. Our assessments are based on pupils’ work and contribution in class, both in their books and in class discussion, along with the observations during roleplay days and independent work.
We work together as a staff team to monitor and reflect on pupils’ work and their learning experiences, with an ongoing commitment to ensuring that these are the best that they can be.
For more information about languages, please contact our subject leader, Mrs Clare Bastow.