MFL
"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart."
Nelson Mandela
At West Bretton we are linguists!
Our Intent
‘A high-quality languages education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. The teaching should enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing.’ (National Curriculum 2014).
At West Bretton, we teach French. We believe that teaching children a different language to their own is vitally important to encourage them to explore and try different experiences throughout their lives. Through our French lessons, we strive to broaden the children’s cultural capital to prepare our learners for life in school and beyond. Our aim for our children is that they leave our school as skilled, confident and enthusiastic languages learners, with the opportunity to have their prior learning recognised, celebrated and extended at Key Stage 3.
Our Implementation
We teach French across Key Stage 2 using the ‘La Jolie Ronde’ Scheme of work through weekly lessons to ensure coverage and progression across the Key Stage. As our classes are mixed-age, we feel that it is more effective to teach our children in set year groups to ensure the progression of skills consistently build during the children’s language learning journey in our school.
From a grammatical perspective, we become familiar with the notion of gender (‘le’ or ‘la’) and we encourage the children to have the confidence to manipulate the grammar. Whilst ensuring the grammar is secure, we develop children’s confidence in the four skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing, through fun and engaging activities.
The children take part in a variety of activities such as:
- Songs, nursery rhymes and poems to develop secure phonics skills, memory skills and encourage active learning during our lessons
- Role-play activities that children can adapt in order to prepare them for real-life situations where they may need their language learning
- Games to secure the children’s vocabulary through repetition and to create a fun and stimulating environment for learning
All of our lessons allow children to gain an understanding and an appreciation of French culture. We provide children with the opportunity to be exposed to a range of high-quality French texts, including poetry from such poets as Jacques Prévert and Paul Éluard.
Our Impact
Our children are regularly assessed based on the outcomes of classroom learning and the pupils’ application of reading, writing, speaking, listening and grammar. We strive to ensure that all our pupils are challenged in their language learning. Through the high-quality teaching of French, pupils will be able to:
- Understand and respond to spoken and written French language
- Write at varying length using phrases from memory which have been adapted by the pupils to suit their own circumstances
- Read a variety of texts using accurate pronunciation and intonation
- Appreciate the differences and similarities between other cultures and their own so that they can build respect and tolerance for other cultures
