French

Intent

Our intent at Rosedale Primary School is to provide our children with the firm foundations that they need to develop their understanding of a modern foreign language as they continue into Key Stage 3 and beyond. It is every child’s right to be able to speak and understand another language to enable them to access the wider world, be that for work or leisure. 

At Rosedale the language that we teach our children is French, and our curriculum aims to promote children’s desire to discover more about other countries and cultures, as well as developing a love of language learning. We want our children to  develop the confidence to communicate in French, using both written and spoken communication. 

Through a curriculum that is clearly sequenced, children are able to build on their vocabulary as they move through Key Stage 2. In every lesson, opportunities are provided for children to revise vocabulary learned in previous lessons to ensure that they remember what they have been taught. 

Our curriculum for teaching French will achieve the aims of the National Curriculum which are:

  • understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources 
  • speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation 
  • can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt 
  • discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied. 

Implementation

We use the Kapow Primary scheme of learning to teach French at Rosedale. This scheme is designed with six strands that run throughout. These are:

  • Speaking and communication
  • Listening
  • Reading and writing
  • Grammar
  • Intercultural understanding
  • Language detective skills

Children 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. 

The scheme is a spiral curriculum, with key skills and vocabulary revisited repeatedly with increasing complexity, allowing children to revise and build on their previous learning. Cross-curricular links are included throughout the units which allows children to make connections and apply their language skills to other areas of their learning. 

The learning is broken down into units, the content of which can be seen in the table below. Currently all of our KS2 children are studying the Y3 programme and from September 2022, Y3 will study the Y3 programme and Y4, Y5 and Y6 will study the Y4 programme. 

Year 3

Puppets
Pupils learn how to introduce themselves, to ask how someone is feeling and to say how they are feeling

Visual Composition
Pupils learn to say the names of colours and describe shapes using the adjectives of colour and size

Playground Games
Children count, recognise and use the numbers to twelve, ask how old someone is and say how old they are and compare sentence structures in French and English

In the Classroom
Children learn commands and objects from the classroom, respond to simple instructions, learn items found in a school bag, read and understand short sentences and present a spoken text

Transport
Children decipher new vocabulary using their knowledge of cognates, develop their understanding of sentence structure, identify sounds and perfect their punctuation.

Year 4

Portraits
Inspired by works from the Louvre, children describe facial expressions build their descriptive vocabulary, understanding of adjectival agreements and sentence structure

Numbers, calendars and Birthdays
Children learn the days of the week, dates and seasons through maths, songs, surveys and the research of French festivals finishing with a birthday celebration

Clothes
Children name items of clothing and the different forms of the indefinite article and possessive adjective and practice using the correct adjectival agreement

French Food
Pupils apply their understanding within a new context; using number when paying for items in a café, and their language detective skills to interpret authentic French menus

 

Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work including role-play, language games and language detective work. ‘Language detective skills’ are developed throughout and rather than committing to memory a vast amount of French vocabulary, children develop an understanding of French grammar. 

Children have a weekly French lesson of around 30 minute for half of each term. Vocabulary taught in the lesson is applied at other times during the week to support children remembering what they’ve learned and is also revised during the half term in which there aren’t French lessons

Impact

Teachers assess children’s progress in French continuously through formative assessment. Regular low-stakes quizzing and retrieval practice activities help children to commit what they have learned to their long-term memory and also supports teachers in identifying gaps in learning and planning to address these. 

At the end of each term teachers assess pupils against their learning from that term and determine whether the child is working towards, at or above age related expectations. 

The expected impact of our French curriculum is that children will:

  • Be able to engage in purposeful dialogue in practical situations 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 an 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 expectations outlined in the National Curriculum for Languages