French Curriculum

Intent

Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures.  The 2014 National Curriculum for Modern Foreign Languages aims to ensure that all children:

• Understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources.
• Are able to speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and that they are 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.

A high-quality languages education should foster children’s curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. At St Joseph and St Teresa's, we are committed to ensuring that teaching enables pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. We recognise that competence in another language enables children to interpret, create and exchange meaning within and across cultures. At St Joseph and St Teresa's we are committed to ensuring our MFL teaching provides the foundation for learning further languages, as well as the means to access international opportunities for study and work later in life.  

Implementation

The French scheme of work is designed with three knowledge strands that run throughout
our units with knowledge building cumulatively. These are:
● Phonics
● Vocabulary
● Grammar
This knowledge can then be applied within our skills strands, which also run throughout each unit in the scheme:
● Language comprehension (Listening and reading)
● Language production (Speaking and writing)
Our National curriculum coverage shows which of our units cover each of the National curriculum attainment targets as well as each of the strands. Our Progression of skills and knowledge shows the skills and knowledge that are taught within each year group and how these skills develop to ensure that attainment targets are securely met by the end of Key Stage 2. Through the French scheme, pupils are given opportunities to communicate for practical purposes around familiar subjects and routines. The scheme provides balanced opportunities for communication in both spoken and written French, although in Year 3 the focus is on developing oral skills, before incorporating written French in Year 4 and beyond. The scheme is a spiral curriculum, with key skills and vocabulary revisited repeatedly with increasing complexity, allowing pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Cross-curricular links are included throughout our French units, allowing children to make connections and apply their language skills to other areas of their learning.
Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work including role-play, language games and language detective work.
Our scheme of work focuses on developing what we term ‘language detective skills’ and developing an understanding of French grammar, and key vocabulary rather than on committing to memory vast amounts of French vocabulary. Pronunciation is emphasised early on using our Mouth mechanics videos to support pupils with phoneme pronunciation in French. Differentiated guidance is available for every lesson to ensure that lessons can be accessed and enjoyed by all. In order to help pupils, retain their French learning, we provide information about how to incorporate French into the classroom environment every day in our ‘During the week’ sections. Strong subject knowledge is vital for staff to be able to deliver a highly effective languages curriculum. Each unit of lessons includes multiple teacher videos to develop subject knowledge and support ongoing CPD. This has been created with the understanding that many teachers do not feel confident delivering the full languages curriculum and every effort has been made to ensure that they feel supported to deliver lessons of a high standard that ensure pupil progression. Lessons include a section entitled, 'Teacher knowledge - language points' to explain key grammar and other details to the teacher before the lesson, together with a Key vocabulary and pronunciation presentation with sound files to demonstrate the correct pronunciation. Many of the other presentations included in the lessons also include sound files, supporting teachers who are less confident with their own pronunciation to deliver the lesson and support the children's learning.