Intent

The intention of the Modern Foreign language curriculum at Sutton Courtenay Cof E Primary is that children are given the strong foundations needed for exploring communication to others, enabling them to reach out socially and develop technical expertise in a way that is enjoyable and stimulating. We encourage children’s confidence; we strive to stimulate and encourage children’s curiosity about language. We plan links to develop their awareness of cultural differences in other countries, through our school values and curriculum enrichment opportunities. We strive to embed the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing necessary to enable children to use and apply their learning in a variety of contexts and lay the foundations for future language learning.

Our Modern Foreign Language curriculum is designed to progressively develop children skills in French as the main language, through regular taught lessons. Children progressively acquire, use and apply a growing bank of vocabulary organised around topics. 

Implementation

In the Foundation Stage, children practice careful listening and patterned and repetitive language through the EYFS curriculum, which prepares them for learning new langauges at later stages.

In Key Stage 1, children begin to learn French. They use simple phrases to build up conversation exchanges of increasing length.

In Key Stage 2, we have designed our own French curriculum based on high quality YouTube resources with Mr Innes, a native French speaker who leads the learning through increasing knowledge of words, phrases, sentences and songs. Topic covered include numbers, family, food, and all about me.  All our children in KS2 have regular French lessons.

Children are encouraged and supported to develop their speaking and listening skills through conversational work, singing activities and games. As confidence and skill grows, children record their work through pictures, captions and sentences.

As with all curriculum areas, we are constantly reviewing and improving our provision. This new curriculum was finalised in September 2022 and we will continue to review its impact.

Impact

MFL is assessed in a variety of ways

• The children’s responses in lessons – their engagement with activities and the depth of their responses
• Their written responses to work
• The level of their final pieces of work which are produced at the end of a topic (Upper KS2)
• Their enjoyment of using and learning another language