French

Vision & Aims

A high-quality languages curriculum should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. The teaching should enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and writing. It should provide opportunities for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read great literature in the original language. Language teaching should inspire children to learn further languages and equip children to work and study in other countries.

We will do this by:

Ensuring that the children are offered 30 minutes of French learning per week in KS2
Ensuring that the teaching is of a high standard by monitoring work which has been produced as well as sharing great practice with the whole school community.
Enabling the children to engage in conversations and practice French in a safe environment in which they are free to explore, experiment and take risks in order to increase their confidence, fluency and spontaneity when speaking French
Ensure that all French lessons are suitably prepared and resourced and children have the opportunity to write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learned.

In teaching French at Grove Road, we aim to offer opportunities to children to:

using practical communication sessions to respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources
offering a step by step approach to learning French in order to build upon, practice and develop an enjoyment of languages which in turn ensures progress
recognising the varying abilities of our multi-cultural children and ensuring learning is appropriately tailored and differentiated for all learners.
Providing a real purpose and context for learning another language and ensuring that both the language and the countries that that the language is spoken in are explored and learned about.

Teaching & Learning

At Grove Road, we recognise that as a multi-cultural community, children may already know and understand another language. This in turn may enable some of the children to make faster progress than others or develop confidence more readily. Our aim is to encourage all pupils to acquire a love of learning languages and lay the foundations for learning further languages at secondary school. We use the teaching scheme “Euro Stars New Primary French”.

Our key teaching objectives are to:

Wherever appropriate it should be linked to other areas of the curriculum and become part of the everyday classroom routine.
Develop children’s confidence when communicating in another language through fun games, practical activities, songs and rhymes.
Connect with a French primary school to exchange learning and to hear real French speakers.

The children will be taught:

To listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and
responding
To explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes and link the spelling, sound and meaning of words
To engage in conversations; ask and answer questions; express opinions and respond to those of others; seek clarification and help
To speak in sentences, using familiar vocabulary, phrases and basic language structures
To develop accurate pronunciation and intonation so that others understand when they are reading aloud or using familiar words and phrases present ideas and information orally to a range of audiences
To read carefully and show understanding of words, phrases and simple writing
To appreciate stories, songs, poems and rhymes in the language
To broaden their vocabulary and develop their ability to understand new words that are introduced into familiar written material, including through using a dictionary
To write phrases from memory, and adapt these to create new sentences, to express ideas clearly
To describe people, places, things and actions orally and in writing