Intent
At Wolsingham Primary School, we want our children to have an awareness and curiosity about forms of communication different to their own. We aim to produce 21st Centrury Citizens who are respectful, open-minded and keen to be part of the global community, communicating with increasing confidence and fluency. We aim to provide children with the opportunity to develop their knowledge and appreciation of different cultures and compare these to their own, equipping them with the skills and confidence necessary to provide a foundation for learning further languages and to study, work and live in other countries as well as the culturally diverse country we live in. We aim to give children the opportunity to develop a curiosity about the wider world and an awareness of different cultures.
The MFL (French) curriculum develops the priorities for pupils at Wolsingham Primary School in the following ways:
Basic skills – Our basic skills focus is evident in the progression that is reinforced and built up on each year. We ensure our children have a confident understanding of basic vocabulary such as numbers, days of the week, months of the year and basic conversation such as introducing themselves.
Resilience and Perseverance – We develop resilient language learners by ensuring children are gaining the confidence to speak French to their peers. Lessons encourage all children to participate and have a go.
Social Awareness – We ensure that pupils gain an understanding of a culture different to their own. Through learning French, our pupils explore French culture and draw comparisons to their own. This provides an opportunity to understand, appreciate and celebrate diversity and promote respect and tolerance of others. We promote the idea that languages are for life and have the potential to open doors in their future.
Knowledge – It is our intention to ensure that by the end of our children’s 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.
Implementation
- Language Angels is used to provide a progressive MFL curriculum, providing pupils with authentic pronunciation.
- In Key Stage One and Key Stage Two, French will be taught every half term in one half hour session per week.
- In Early Years, children are introduced to French via songs and games.
- Each year group will commence their French teaching in the Autumn Term with a phonics unit.
- Throughout units of work, teachers will make links and encourage children to make links between the children’s mother tongue and the target language, as well as their own culture and other countries’ cultures.
- All lessons include elements of speaking, listening and reading or writing.
- Lessons are planned in sequences that provide children with the opportunities to review, remember, deepen and apply their understanding.
- Teachers will promote an enthusiasm for learning a new language, ensuring children are aware of the opportunities it can present.
Impact
As children progress through the Modern Foreign Languages curriculum at Wolsingham Primary School they will:
- 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
- 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
- Be prepared for their next steps in learning a modern foreign language in Key Stage 3
