Modern Foreign Languages
Languages
Intent
The Longhill Primary School MFL curriculum is designed to give the children the opportunity to explore language and find out about countries where it is spoken.
In addition, our global links work and partnership with a school in Sierra Leone allows the children to discover more about the wider world and work in collaboration with children from a different country.
Our high-quality language curriculum enables children to be develop their reading, writing, speaking and listening skills in another language and this further supports these skills in their own language. Furthermore, our curriculum gives the children the opportunity to develop their cultural knowledge of different countries and make comparisons to their own lives. Our work with the International Pupil Council and our partner school in Sierra Leone further supports this.
Our curriculum lays the foundations for future language learning by fostering an interest in language acquisiton, developing resilience and love of learning.
Implementation
Our MFL curriculum is carefully designed to include a mix of speaking, listening, reading and writing skills in French for each of the mini areas studied throughout the year.
In Key Stage 2, children take part in one timetabled lesson of quality-first French teaching each week.
The curriculum is delivered using ‘Learn French with Luc and Sophie’, a scheme which teaches French systematically from Years 3 to 6.
Through the Longhill MFL curriculum, children develop their curiosity for language through:
- Opportunities to practise their pronunciation and expression through role play and singing songs in French.
- Opportunities to listen attentively to their peers, to adults and to French songs.
- Reading exercises which allow children to find out more about French culture and traditions.
- Writing exercises where the children can describe their own lives and preferences as well as those of others.
New vocabulary is introduced in each of the half-termly topics and this is referred to throughout the week to further embed it into the children’s learning.
ICT is used where possible to record pupils speaking and to allow the children be creative in the recording of their learning.
In Key Stage 1, children are given the opportunity to use basic vocabulary in a variety of contexts throughout the day such as answering the register in French, singing French songs which provides the foundations for early language acquisition skills.
Our work with the International Pupil Council has made the children more aware about global issues and their role in the wider world.
In the summer term, the whole school participates in an ‘Around the world day’. Each class becomes a country; children use their ‘passport’ to visit each country and learn more about it through different activities. This day is designed to further develop the children’s curiosity about the world around them and foster a love of language learning.
In addition, our partnership with a primary school in Sierra Leone has enabled staff from both schools to visit and interact with the children, providing them with wider experiences of a different culture.
Impact
At Longhill Primary School, the MFL curriculum is designed to enable children to develop their love of language learning from an early age. It allows the children to be curious and discover more about the world around them. It gives them the opportunity to develop links with children in another country and gain an understanding of the similarities and differences between their lives.
It gives children the opportunity to understand how to make themselves understood in another language which then develops more awareness of grammatical structures in their own language.
Our assessment of French allows knowledge and skills to be monitored throughout the year. This is shown through child-based outcomes. The children complete their own self-evaluation at the end of each unit. In addition, monitoring is completed through pupil voice interviews and observations of learning.
Click the link below for a more detailed plan:
French half termly topics years 3 – 6 KEY VOCAB
