MFL

Intent

At Ainderby Steeple CE School, our intent for French (Modern Foreign Languages) is to engage our children with practical language skills, building their resilience and confidence in speaking and listening so that they can apply these skills throughout their learning.
Because children need to know how to communicate effectively, creatively and confidently, we use language teaching to create a safe space for making mistakes, modelling spoken language and challenging and encouraging pupils to develop a ‘have a go’ attitude.
At Ainderby, we deliver lessons which are fun, engaging and practical, allowing all our children to develop an enjoyment of French and to make the connection with how language skills can support them to make progress across the whole curriculum. We believe that by learning to communicate in an additional language, our children will develop confidence speaking and listening and grow in their understanding of how language is constructed, in both verbal and written forms.

What does French look like at our school?

Implementation

Planning: The progression of the MFL curriculum in years 3-6 is in line with age- related expectations based on National Curriculum 2014 and supported by the NYCC Scheme of Work – which includes planning and curriculum resources.

Teaching: As a school, we have chosen the NYCC Scheme of Work from Year 3 to Year 6. The scheme of work supports our teachers in delivering fun and engaging lessons which help to raise standards and allow all pupils to achieve to their full potential. We are confident that the scheme of work provides flexibility, strong cross-curricular links and gives excellent supporting material for less confident teachers. We have ordered the curriculum so that children across KS2 are all learning related themes in the same teaching cycle.

Marking and feedback: This is designed to support children to know what they need to do to improve and is given, for the most part, verbally but also through written comments and corrections.

Assessment: Pupil attainment is tracked using Sonar, curriculum coverage statements and progress are updated termly.

Moderation: We have a rolling programme of in-house monitoring which includes work scrutiny, pupil conferencing, lesson observations, learning walks and presentations to governors.

Opportunities to celebrate French

We deliver a whole-school, French-themed event in the summer term – this could be a café, an exhibition or a performance.

Impact

The impact of our French curriculum is that our children are growing in their confidence to communicate in an additional language, and developing their speaking and listening skills.

We are seeing a growing resilience amongst our children as they ‘have a go,’ knowing they are in an environment where it is ok to make mistakes. In addition, by encouraging children to communicate through the use of an additional language, we see them develop their ability to accept, respect and celebrate, cultural differences as compassionate and responsible members of society.

Quotes from our children

“I love learning different languages.”
“If we wanted to go to France, we would know how to speak their language.”
“I liked it when we learned about the weather in French.”