St. Joseph's Catholic Primary School, a Voluntary Academy

Modern Foreign Languages

Subject Leader-C Hargreaves

Intent

At St. Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, we aim to instil a love of language learning. We believe that through language we promote pupils’ curiosity, problem solving skills and deepen their understanding and awareness of different cultures and countries.

We want pupils to develop the confidence to communicate in French for practical purposes, using both written and spoken French.  We use ‘Kapow Primary’s French scheme of work’ to support pupils to meet the National curriculum end of Key Stage 2 attainment targets. 

Implementation

 The Kapow 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 overview shows which of our units cover each of the National curriculum attainment targets as well as each of the strands. 

Our progression of skills shows the skills 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. 

 Pupils are given opportunities to communicate for practical purposes around familiar subjects and routines, balancing opportunities for communication in both spoken and written French, initially on developing oral skills, before incorporating written French as pupils move through to UKS2.  

French is planned on a 2-year spiral curriculum over a period of 20 weeks in the form a carousel. Key skills and vocabulary are revisited repeatedly with increasing complexity, allowing pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Cross-curricular links are planned throughout, 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.  Teaching 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.

Impact

Learning is monitored through both formative and summative assessment. 

The expected impact of following the Kapow Primary 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 construct short texts on familiar topics. 
• Meet the end of Key Stage 2 stage expectations outlined in the National curriculum for Languages.