Modern Foreign Languages at St Stephen's

At St. Stephen's, we teach French as our Modern Foreign Language. At present, a specialist French teacher is employed to teach a 1 hour session per week to years 3, 4 , 5 and 6.

Intent:

The skills, knowledge and understanding gained through learning a language contribute to the development of children’s oracy and literacy and to their understanding of their own culture and those of others. At St Stephen's CE Primary School, we feel that the earlier a child is exposed to a foreign language, the faster the language in question is acquired. We believe that the early acquisition of French will facilitate the learning of other foreign languages later in life. We will prepare children for the KS3 language curriculum to enable them to transfer confidently and successfully.

Implementation:

We teach French across Key Stage 2. The school uses the Junior Jams scheme of work to support the teaching and learning of French. This provides clear progression for the development of speaking and listening and vocabulary acquisition. There are resources to support the teaching and learning opportunities for pupils.

They use a variety of the following techniques to encourage children to have an active engagement with French:

• Games – in order to develop vocabulary through repetition, reading, writing, speaking and listening skills.
• Role-play – these should relate to the situations the children may find themselves in the future.
• Action songs and rhymes – to develop phonetic skills, memory skills and to further vocabulary.
• Reading and writing quality materials.
• We build children’s confidence through praise for any contribution they make in the foreign language, however tentative.

We base the teaching on the 2014 National Curriculum. We have adapted this to the context of our school. 

Impact:

Through the high quality first teaching of French taking place we will see the impact of the subject in the following ways: 

· Children will become aware that a language has a structure, and that the structure differs from one language to another.

· Children will develop their language and communication through development of the four key skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing.

· Children will enrich their language learning by developing an understanding of the French culture.

· Children will transfer to KS3 effectively and successfully and will be well prepared to continue and develop their language skills.