French
Intent Statement
At Shay Lane, we consider learning a foreign language essential to understanding and respecting other cultures. Learning MFL fosters curiosity and deepens understanding of the world. Through our MFL curriculum, teachers and leaders develop children’s understanding of languages and cultures, celebrating diversity.
We foster a love of learning languages, which begins in Key Stage One where children become introduced to the French language by taking part in games, songs and rhymes, led by our specialist language teacher.
Through the teaching of French in KS2, the children will develop skills in Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing. Learning is progressive in each skill area, ensuring that pupils reach the standards expected within the National Curriculum Programme of Study.
We supplement our French Curriculum with the use of storybooks, songs and poems to ensure that pupils are able to read and appreciate literature in the original language.
One of our key aims is to ensure that our pupils leave Key Stage Two with a very good understanding of how to read words in French with accurate pronunciation. Whenever we teach a group of words or a list of vocabulary, we focus pupils’ attention to the sound- spelling link, so that pupils become increasingly confident at decoding as they move through Key stage Two.
In teaching the grapheme-phoneme correspondence, we focus on both individual letters (with a particular focus on letters with accents that affect pronunciation) and on common graphemes, for example:
- Oi-noir, au revoir, bon soir, trois
- Eu- bleu, cheveux, deux, monsieur
- In- lapin, matin, magasin, train
These are introduced gradually across the four years of study with teachers identifying common sounds across a group of words whether through a list, a rhyme or through song.
As a result, pupils are able to confidently apply their phonic knowledge by the end of Year 6 and attempt to read unfamiliar vocabulary with increasing accuracy.
It is our belief that learning French at Shay Lane will provide children with the foundation for learning further languages at Key stage Three and beyond..
The aims of MFL in our school are:
- To foster a love of learning languages and a fascination of how language works
To provide the opportunity to read and appreciate stories, poems and rhymes in a foreign language
- An understanding of key concepts: gender, adjectival agreement
- To develop fluency in using high frequency verbs to form sentences
- To develop an understanding of how gender affects other words within a sentence
- An understanding of how word order may differ from English
- An understanding of how to use a bilingual dictionary
- Confidence in learning vocabulary and understanding how to commit words to memory
- The opportunity to understand and respond to language from authentic sources
- The confidence to write, integrating new language into previously learned language
‘To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world’ Chinese Proverb
Policies
Whole School Overview
Progression Document
Links
Gallery
We have a wonderful selection of French Language story books in our library for the children to read and enjoy.
