MFL

 

St. Edmund’s Catholic Primary School

Primary Modern Foreign Language Intent Document

At St Edmund’s Catholic Primary School, we are LINGUISTS! We want our children to be inspired and develop a love of languages and to expand their horizons to other countries, cultures and people. We aim to help children grow into curious, confident and reflective language learners and to provide them with a foundation that will equip them for further language studies.

Our curriculum document enables children to develop their interest, knowledge and understanding of the modern foreign language of French through a carefully planned sequence of lessons, ensuring progressive coverage of the skills required by the national curriculum. Our chosen themes - Time Travelling, Let's Visit a French Town and This Is France - introduce the culture of French-speaking countries and communities. We aim to foster our children’s curiosity and help deepen their understanding of the world. The curriculum has been chosen to allow opportunity for children to gradually build on their skills and enables children to express their ideas and thoughts in French and provides opportunities to interact and communicate with others both in speech and in writing. At the heart of our French curriculum, is the desire to expose our children to authentic French speakers by regular opportunities to listen to native speakers.

In Lower KS2, children acquire basic skills and understanding of French with a strong emphasis placed on developing their Speaking and Listening skills. These will be embedded and further developed in Upper KS2, alongside Reading and Writing, gradually progressing onto more complex language concepts and greater learner autonomy.

Through our French scheme, we intend to inspire pupils to develop a love of languages and to expand their horizons to other countries, cultures and people. We aim to help children grow into curious, confident and reflective language learners and to provide them with a foundation that will equip them for further language studies.

Implementation

Each programme of study is built around the concepts of ‘Understand and respond to spoken language from a variety of resources  (Listening); speak with increasing fluency, confidence and spontaneity continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation (speaking); Understand and respond to written language from a variety of authentic resources and develop an appreciation of a range of writing (reading); Write at varying length for different purposes and audiences (writing) and Use a variety of grammatical structures’.

We teach our children in mixed aged classes within Key Stage 2; therefore, substantive knowledge will be taught over a two- year cycle (A & B). We chose to adopt the Twinkl French scheme. The curriculum is mapped comprehensively to show the progression of skills and knowledge from Year 3 to Year 6, this is taught on a weekly basis.

The lessons are sequenced, so that prior learning is considered and opportunities for revision of language and grammar are built in. Each lesson and resources help our children to build on prior knowledge alongside the introduction of new skills. The series of lessons, provide structure and context as well as offering an insight into the culture of French-speaking countries and communities.

The introduction and revision of key vocabulary and grammatical structures is built into each lesson. This vocabulary is then included in display materials and additional resources so that our children have opportunities to repeat and revise their learning. Lessons are sequenced so that prior learning is considered and opportunities for revision of language and grammar are built in.

Being a linguist means that disciplinary and substantive knowledge complement each other harmoniously. Language disciplines and skills such as using a bilingual dictionary, translation strategies, pronunciation, intonation and awareness of gender and adjectival agreement are high profile within our MFL curriculum and intertwines with our work in literacy, in that we look at the etymology of words as they occur and pick out words of Latin/French origin to work on in guided reading and English lessons.

 Impact

Our French curriculum offers high-quality and well-planned lessons, which encourage progression. Key vocabulary is embedded in each lesson. Continuity and progression in the curriculum are built around substantive and disciplinary knowledge within French. These are broken into Lower and Upper Key Stage 2 expectations.

In order to ensure our aims have been met, we scrutinise learning through:

• Assessing children’s understanding of the topic including linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught. – Prior and Post learning activity.
• Talking to children during the lesson to ensure they have understood the learning objective – Assessment for learning.
• Mark completed work – Assessment for learning

The above enables the teacher to make an informed judgement on the children’s understanding and record their linguistic ability on the school tracking tool ‘itrack’.

MFL Documents