French
French Narrative
The MFL curriculum has been intentionally designed to ensure children develop a substantive knowledge (factual content) alongside the development of disciplinary knowledge (the action taken within a specific subject to gain knowledge) as they learn the fundamental elements of what it is to be a linguist. Our MFL curriculum enables our children to develop their unique potential within a secure and caring environment. Our children are given every opportunity to build their cultural capital and threshold concepts in French to enable them to be successful citizens in our ever-changing world and in their future lives. Our approach to French aims to develop children’s confidence in their own abilities and independence helping them become successful linguists, eager to learn more and build a love for the subject.
Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. 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. It should also provide opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read great literature in the original language. Language teaching should provide the foundation for learning further languages, equipping pupils to study and work in other countries. (National Curriculum 2014)
The curriculum has been intentionally designed to ensure children develop a substantive knowledge (factual content) of vocabulary, grammatical structures and cultural differences.
The following disciplinary knowledge is covered as part of the NPAT MFL curriculum: reading, writing, speaking, listening and culture. By studying these concepts, children will be able to understand main points and some detail in familiar audio and text, listen at near normal speed and start to decipher meaning and work out new words, create short texts and have short conversations about familiar topics, adapt language they have learnt to express themselves with increasing independence and accurate pronunciation and to converse and write with grammatical accuracy.
The teaching of French gives all classes access to a very high-quality foreign languages curriculum using the Language Angels scheme of work and resources. This will progressively develop pupil skills in foreign languages through regularly taught and well-planned weekly French lessons which will be taught by class teachers. Children will progressively acquire, use and apply a growing bank of vocabulary, language skills and grammatical knowledge organised around age-appropriate topics and themes - building blocks of language into more complex, fluent and authentic language.
The planning of different levels of challenge (as demonstrated in the various Language Angels Teaching Type categories) and which units to teach at each stage of the academic year will be addressed dynamically and will be reviewed in detail annually as units are updated and added to the scheme. Lessons offering appropriate levels of challenge and stretch will be taught at all times to ensure pupils learn effectively, continuously building their knowledge of and enthusiasm for the language they are learning. At the heart of our approach is retrieval practice and revisiting knowledge. Retrieval practice involves deliberately recalling knowledge from memory to make learning more robust and connected. Units of work often refer to and build upon learning from previous units to enable children to grapple with grammatical concepts.
Horizontal links are explicitly made e.g., In Year Three children learn about the names of fruits and the use of the ‘le’, ‘la’ and les’ for the determiner the and the concept of masculine and feminine nouns which is built up on in other units within the year group and across the key stage.
Vertical links will be made where knowledge and understanding are built upon from previous MFL units covered during the school year but also across the key stage.
Diagonal links will be made, particularly where this is cross-curricular. e.g., links between MFL and History: such as the topic on The Romans (History) and also Ancient Britain. Links between MFL and PSHCE with food, healthy eating, family and presenting myself.
Children begin learning French in year 3.
By the end of KS2, with reference to the National Curriculum, children will gain coherent knowledge and understanding of a modern foreign language (French) and of some of the different cultural aspects to different francophones.
During Lower Key Stage 2 the following units of work have been selected: phonetics, animals, musical instruments, fruits, ancient Britain, vegetables, presenting myself, classroom and house.
During Upper Key Stage 2, the following units of work have been selected: phonetics, vegetables, presenting myself, family, Romans, clothes, pets, dates and weather, my house and school.
The NPAT curriculum and pedagogy will therefore enable children to begin secondary school being able to hold a conversation by speaking and listening, read key words and phrases and to write sentences with grammatical accuracy.
