Languages
Foreign Language Intent
Our foreign language curriculum is designed with the schools’ vision and ethos at the centre. We aim through our French curriculum to ensure that our children experience ‘a family rooted in God's love'.
Through an environment of Christian love and support, we aim that our children will become confident and curious linguists. Children are encouraged be resilient learners, expressing themselves using the spoken and written word as well as listen to others speaking the language. Children have opportunities to share their learning with their peers though role play and classroom based conversation.
We believe that learning a foreign language is an important part of understanding our place in the wider world. We aim that as children learn another language, they also deepen their knowledge of the culture surrounding that language and understand more about the beliefs and traditions of others.
The subject leader for Foreign Languages is Mrs Chase
Foreign Language Implementation
At Brindle St James’ children start to learn French in Year 3. As we have mixed-age classes, the scheme follows a two-year rolling programme where the main phonics and grammar elements are repeated but new vocabulary is substituted along with different contexts. Our chosen scheme implements key recommendations from the pedagogy review and the Ofsted languages research report, which highlight the three key knowledge strands phonics, vocabulary and grammar.
Our KS2 children have a weekly French lesson of 30 minutes. In addition they re-visit and deepen their learning for 5-10 minutes every day with structured language tasks that practise retrieval, improve retention and embed learning in long-term memory. Further opportunities to recycle key vocabulary (e.g. numbers) and develop children’s confidence are often built into classroom routines including greetings, providing instructions, stating lunch preferences, registration, rewards and praise on a more regular basis, even just for a few minutes in the school day e.g. when children are lining up.
The detailed scheme of work with audio-enabled resources for every lesson can be adapted to support active engagement and meet different learning styles for different cohorts of children.
Progression is built into the scheme of work where a topic will be fully developed throughout a cycle and then built on throughout successive cycles. The topics for Y3/Y4 and Y5/Y6:
Autumn Term- Describing me and others; Saying what I and others have
Spring Term- Saying what I and others do; Saying how many and describing things
Summer Term- Describing things and people; Expressing likes and saying what I and other do
Children’s listening and spoken language is encouraged through fun games, partner work and whole group discussions. Throughout a unit of lessons pupils quickly build up a repertoire of vocabulary enabling them to confidently listen, speak, read and then write. By the end of Key Stage 2, pupils will be writing paragraphs using learnt skills. The use of French dictionaries is encouraged to further the pupils’ vocabulary.
Children are continuously assessed on the knowledge they are taught in lessons, whenever they are called upon to understand and/or produce language, without reference to resources.
Foreign Language Links