MFL
Intent
Billinge St Aidan’s French scheme of work aims to instil 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. Through our scheme of work, 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.
St Aidan’s French scheme of work supports pupils to meet the national curriculum end of Key stage 2 attainment targets (there are no Key stage 1 attainment targets for Languages).
Implementation
St Aidan’s French scheme of work is designed with six strands that run throughout. These are:
- Speaking and pronunciation
- Listening
Reading and writing - Grammar
- Intercultural understanding
- Language detective skills
Our curriculum mapping shows which of our units cover each of the National curriculum attainment targets as well as each of the strands.
Our Progression of skills and knowledge shows the skills and knowledge that are taught within each year group and how these skills develop to ensure that attainment targets are securely met by the end of Key Stage 2.
Through St Aidan’s French scheme, pupils are given opportunities to communicate for practical purposes around familiar subjects and routines. The scheme 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 and beyond.
St Aidan’s French scheme is a spiral curriculum, with key skills and vocabulary revisited repeatedly with increasing complexity, allowing pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Cross-curricular links are included throughout our French units, allowing children to make connections and apply their language skills to other areas of their learning.
Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work including role-play, language games and language detective work. Our scheme of work focuses on developing what we term ‘language detective skills’ and developing an understanding of French grammar, rather than on committing to memory vast amounts of French vocabulary. Differentiated guidance is available for every lesson to ensure that lessons can be accessed and enjoyed by all. In order to help pupils, retain their French learning, we provide information about how to incorporate French into the classroom environment every day in our ‘During the week’ sections.
Strong subject knowledge is vital for staff to be able to deliver a highly effective languages curriculum and teachers will have access to multiple teacher videos to develop subject knowledge and support ongoing CPD.
Children will have access to a Knowledge Organiser which shows them the content of what they will be studying over the unit of work - it contains key vocabulary and sentence structures that we want them to learn. These then form our assessment in the subject, which is saved and tracked in our Insight Tracking system.
Each objective is assessed through quizzes, classwork and unit assessment tests and each child is rated for each objective covered on a 1-3 system. 1 - some evidence, but not yet secure; 2 - objective is secured; 3 - working at greater depth.
Each child is then given a score from 0 - 6 for the subject at the end of each term throughout the year. 0 - below age related expectations; 1 - emerging, 2 developing (working towards the age related expectation); 3 - progressing, 4 - secure (working at the age related expectation); 5 - exceeding, 6 exceeding with greater depth (working beyond the age related expectation). The aim is for every child to achieve 3 or 4 in every subject at the end of the year.
To ensure, as much as possible, that the knowledge delivered in lesson embeds with each child the class, with their teacher, will produce a “Floor Map’ book. This book shows examples of the work produced during the unit and more importantly a set of key questions and facts that need to be recovered at later dates in the years to ensure full understanding. These books are then passed through the school to produce a map of their learning through their entire school journey.
Impact
After the implementation of St Aidan’s French scheme, pupils should leave school equipped with a range of language-learning skills to enable them to study French, or any other language, with confidence at Key Stage 3.
The expected impact of following the St Aidan’s French scheme of work 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.
- Be able to construct short texts on familiar topics.
- Meet the end of Key Stage 2 stage expectations outlined in the national curriculum for Languages.