Intent

At Bishop Ridley, we aim to instill a love of language learning to all pupils, through a fun and engaging French curriculum. In line with our school vision of ‘One Community’, we use French to raise pupils’ awareness of other cultures around the world and celebrate the diversity within our school.

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. The French scheme of work supports pupils to meet the National curriculum end of Key stage 2 attainment targets.

Implementation

French is taught across Key Stage 2 following the Kapow scheme of work, which is designed with three knowledge strands that run throughout the units with knowledge building cumulatively. These are:

• Phonics
• Vocabulary
• Grammar

This knowledge can then be applied within the skills strands, which also run throughout each unit in the scheme:

• Language comprehension (Listening and reading)
• Language production (Speaking and writing)

Careful planning ensures that the units of work cover each of the National Curriculum attainment targets. Our progression of skills and knowledge detail what is covered 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 the 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.

The 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 ‘language detective skills’ and developing an understanding of French grammar, and key vocabulary rather than on committing to memory vast amounts of French vocabulary. Pronunciation is emphasised early on by supporting pupils with phoneme pronunciation in French. Lessons are adapted to ensure that lessons can be accessed and enjoyed by all.

Strong subject knowledge is vital for staff to be able to deliver a highly-effective languages curriculum. Each unit of lessons includes multiple teacher videos to develop subject knowledge and support ongoing CPD.

Impact

The impact of our lessons is monitored continuously through both formative and

summative assessment. At the end of each lesson, pupils are assessed against the learning objectives and this is recorded each week to ensure that future lessons are adapted to meet the needs of all pupils. At the end of the unit, pupils are given an end of unit assessment to complete to ascertain their understanding.

The expected impact of following the 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.

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.