MFL
French at King's Court First School
Our Vision
At King's Court, we aim to instill a love of language learning and an awareness of other cultures. We want pupils to develop the confidence to communicate in French for practical purposes, using both written and spoken French.
Intent
We aim to give pupils a foundation for language learning that encourages and enables them to apply their skills to learning further languages, developing a strong understanding of the English language, facilitating future study and opening opportunities to study and work in other countries in the future.
Implementation
Through our French curriculum, pupils are given opportunities to communicate for practical purposes around familiar subjects and routines. The curriculum provides balanced opportunities for communication in both spoken and written French, although in Year 3 the focus is on developing oral skills, before incorporating written French in Year 4. Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work including role-play, language games and language detective work.
Impact
The expected impact of our French curriculum is that children will:
- Be able to engage in purposeful dialogue in practical situations (e.g., ordering in a cafe, following directions) and express an opinion.
- Make increasingly accurate attempts to read unfamiliar words, phrases, and short texts. Speak and read aloud with confidence and accuracy in pronunciation.
- Demonstrate understanding of spoken language by listening and responding appropriately. Use a bilingual dictionary to support their language learning.
- Be able to identify word classes in a sentence and apply grammatical rules they have learnt. Have developed an awareness of cognates and near-cognates and be able to use them to tackle unfamiliar words in French, English, and other languages.
Teachers make a judgement on the extent to which children have displayed competent language skills and met the intended learning outcome each lesson and record this on assessment grids for each module. Verbal feedback is also given throughout French lessons to guide children on improving their language skills.