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Intent
At Draycott & Rodney Stoke Church of England First School the intent of our French curriculum is to ensure that every child enjoys learning a foreign language and becomes an enthusiastic lifelong language learner.
We recognise that language learning brings many and varied benefits, including developing greater intercultural understanding and appreciation of difference and diversity, enhancing pupils’ problem-solving abilities and basic literacy and numeracy and improving their listening and communication skills. Our intention is to ensure that these aspects are developed fully through the curriculum and also through the way in which the curriculum is delivered. We seek to develop a rich and motivating language learning environment, in which risk-taking and creativity are encouraged and actively developed in order to promote independent learning.
We embrace the aims of the National Curriculum and aim for all pupils to:
- Understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources.
- Are able to speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, ask simple questions and finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and continually improve the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation.
- Can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the grammatical structures that they have learnt.
- Discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.
- Develop a positive attitude towards learning a foreign language.
Implementation
In Years 3 and 4 French teaching is delivered creatively and effectively by a specialist teacher, following the planning and support from the iLanguages and Early Start schemes and various other resources. Pupils receive 50 minutes French teaching a week in a discrete timetabled slot.
Children are taught to listen intently to spoken language and respond, and sound-symbol correspondences are explicity taught at an age-appropriate level. Furthermore, learners are encouraged to develop an appreciation of a variety of stories, songs, poems and rhymes in French that are delivered throughout the curriculum.
Pupils’ written work is recorded in an exercise book which spans both Years 3 and 4. This is supplemented by audio and video recordings where appropriate. An assessment map is in place and pupils are assessed in 1 or 2 of the 4 key skills of listening, speaking reading and writing once per term. Results and completed tests are retained and a record is made of which pupils are at, above or below ARE.
Impact
By the end of Year 4 we aspire to produce confident, inquisitive learners of French who have sensitivity to other cultures and ways of thinking. Pupils should understand the main points of familiar sentences in speech and in writing, pronounce words accurately using their knowledge of phonics and recall short phrases from memory, especially those including high frequency verbs (e.g. likes/ dislikes ‘have’ and ‘be’) and other commonly used vocabulary such as days and numbers. Learners will have an understanding of the concept of gender and that determiners change in French according to the gender of the noun they precede. They will understand that most nouns follow the adjective they describe and will have come across singular pronouns. Liaison with MFL staff at Fairlands ensures that pupils continue to build on the progress they have made.