Modern Foreign Languages
At Kingsmead Primary School, we believe that the learning of a language provides a valuable educational, social and cultural experience for our pupils, including those with special educational needs. It helps them to develop communication skills, including the core skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. The children’s knowledge of how language works, phonology and elements of grammar will be developed and extended. Lessons will enable pupils to make substantial progress in one language. The transferable language learning skills gained will assist and lay foundations for further language learning. It will provide pupils with the confidence and independence to explore and be able to attempt manipulation of the structure of language. Learning another language gives children a new and broader perspective on the world, encouraging them to understand their own cultures and those of others.
The National Curriculum for French aims to ensure that all children:
Are encouraged to foster curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world.
Learn to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing.
Are provided with opportunities to communicate for practical purposes and learn new ways of thinking
Our school follows the Primary Languages Network scheme of work (Click2Teach/Video2Teach). It is a live scheme which is continually updated and revised in order to meet with current curriculum standards. It holds at its core the Intent, Implementation and Impact of MFL whilst maintaining a ‘primary’ focus. Alongside the planning provided, the scheme is supported by accompanying videos, PowerPoints, audio files (spoken by native speakers),, songs, games, cultural points of reference, seasonal events and cross-curricular links.To promote an active learning of languages a range of teaching methods are implemented to ensure that the children are developing their linguistic skills through listening, speaking, reading and writing in order to be secondary ready. Activities can consist of actions, rhymes, stories, song, drama, grammar focus, video clips, air writing, sentence structure, dictionary work, book making and many more creative ways to extend, embed and combine language skills. Written work is kept in workbooks, although formal writing is not the outcome of every lesson. The skill of writing is developed through use of whiteboards and air writing leading to writing in books.
Children in Year 3-6 learn French in school every week using the Primary Language Network. The National curriculum for Languages and the childrens taught learning of French is started in Year 3. The younger children in EYFS and KS1 are introduced to words and phrases in their everyday activities.
The children in KS2 build up their knowledge and skills by working through the language learning stages from Stage 1 in Year 3 to Stage 4 in Year 6. The scheme of work is progressive, with the foundations being laid in introducing new phrases and words to the children in EYFS and Year1 to greet, thank and say goodbye as well as simple counting.
As our school has mixed-age classes, we adapt the scheme of work to form a two-year cycle (Year A and Year B) which allows the children to access the four stages of language learning and complete these by the end of KS2.
Our curriculum is planned to demonstrate progression both in core skills and language learning skills. Assessment for learning takes place during lessons in order to evaluate and provide immediate feedback to improve further. Errors are corrected by being ‘re-framed’ and a growth mindset is encouragement for all to ‘have a go’ and learn from any mistakes.
Pupils self-assess each learning objective using PLN’s self-assessment cloud documents. There are inbuilt opportunities to carry out summative assessment (Puzzle It Out) three times during the year in listening, speaking, reading and writing in order to track progress. The aim is for a core body of language (words and phrases) to be ‘left in the sieve’ (as quoted by Dr Michael Wardle, HMI Lead for Languages) by the end of each stage.
If you were to walk into a French lesson at Kingsmead you would see:
Children learning to be language detectives
Children using these skills in other languages too.
Through singing, acting, watching, listening and playing the children begin to learn how to communicate in French
Children finding out interesting facts about France