French

MFL

Intent

At Swanland School we want the children to develop a strong foundation for language learning. To enable this to happen we have established a progressive, interactive, and fully inclusive curriculum. Our curriculum recognises the importance of identifying not just what we want our pupils to know and do in MFL but also the intellectual outcomes we intend for them to achieve by and through their learning. The children’s knowledge of how language works will be developed and extended. Lessons will enable pupils to make substantial progress in one language and the linguistic skills gained will assist and lay foundations for further and future language learning. It will provide pupils with the confidence and independence in exploring and experimenting with the structure of language.

As our children progress as linguists, our expectations of them must also be focused on the following progression in subject outcomes. This progress begins in KS2 through introducing the children to an appropriate balance of spoken and written language and continues to equip the children and provide them with strong foundations for further foreign language learning and their transition into Key Stage 3.

The French scheme of work used throughout the school is in line with statutory requirements along with ensuring that each year group will teach specific areas and skills. These particular areas and skills are designed to expand the learning obtained in previous years, whilst building further on pupils’ understanding, subject knowledge and skills. Swanland School commits to ensuring the learning of languages is inspiring and stretches its pupils both intellectually and emotionally.

The scheme of work will;

• provide an exciting, interactive, inclusive and challenging linguistic curriculum for all pupils
• enthuse and equip children with the necessary skills to learn new languages
• give children access to a variety of resources, including: dictionaries, books, songs and rhymes
• instil resilience, reflective learning and a ‘can do’ attitude for all our pupils, particularly when engaging with new language and learning new phonetics and pronunciations
• teach pupils to be responsible, patient and respectful when exploring and celebrating differences in cultures and languages
• ensure that language learning is accessible for all children
• equip pupils with the skills and foundations to develop and interest in linguistics and a love for learning languages.

The MFL curriculum is taught throughout the school in separate lessons, as well as incidentally through activities such as completing the register in French. The school will work towards these aims in partnership with parents.

Implementation

The school is committed to providing its children with the opportunities to apply their language knowledge and skills into real life situations; through practical lessons, role play (including French cafes) and a wide range of resources. Lessons will focus on teaching key knowledge and skills, whist encouraging children to ask a range of questions and participate in discussions and debates with one another. Some topics may link to the PSHCE and Geography curriculum.

Our school follows the Primary Languages Network scheme of work. It is a live scheme which is continually updated and revised in order to meet with current curriculum standards. Alongside the planning provided, the network also enriches this through accompanying power points, pod casts (spoken by native speakers) links to authentic literature, songs, games, culture points of reference along with links to appropriate websites.

To promote an active learning of languages a range of teaching methods are implemented to ensure that the children are developing their linguistic skills through listening, speaking, reading and writing in order to be secondary ready. Activities can consist of actions, rhymes, stories, song, drama, grammar focus, video clips, air writing, sentence structure, dictionary work, book making and many more creative ways to extend, embed and combine language skills.

Health and safety

Equipment is safety checked and children are taught how to safely use all equipment.

Homework

Homework, in MFL, is provided in line with whole school policy and will be given at the discretion of the teacher, where appropriate, and such to coincide and support linguistic investigations and topics.

Impact

We believe that our MFL curriculum is progressive and challenging, whilst remaining relevant. It is carefully planned to demonstrate progression. We measure the impact of our curriculum in several ways, which includes: learning walks and pupil voice, lesson observations, and age related expectations to aid teacher assessment.

Through our MFL curriculum we aim for our pupils to be enthusiastic language learners, who are responsible, respectful, confident and creative in their linguistic development. As a result of our interactive and engaging curriculum and high-quality teaching we will see the impact of MFL in the following ways:

• Children will be able to communicate with each other in French.
• Children will become aware that a language has a structure, and that the structure differs from one language to another.
• Children will develop their language through development of the four key skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing.
• Children will enrich their language learning by developing an understanding of the French culture.
• Children will learn how language skills can be applied to a range of languages.
• Children will transfer to KS3 effectively and successfully and will be well prepared to continue and develop their language skills.

During each year group the teacher will be able to use their knowledge and understanding of each pupil, gained through extensive formative assessment over the previous French learning, to reach an accurate judgment of what they know and can do. This is then added to Scholar Pack.  Most critically this decision is based on the professional knowledge and judgement that the teacher possesses of the pupil, built up over an extended period of time, which is then used to make a rounded and holistic judgement of their attainment in French. Seesaw can be and is frequently used throughout KS2 to upload children’s work, involving parents in sharing their child’s learning journey.

Progressive curric French Oct 24