Intent Implementation and Impact

Intent

How do we inspire our children?

At Ivington C.E. Primary School, we believe learning a foreign language is a necessary part of being a member of a multi-cultural society and provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality languages education will foster children's curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. The teaching at Ivington enables children to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and gives them the opportunities to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. It should also provide opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes, learning new ways of thinking. The teaching of a language should provide the foundation for learning further languages, equipping children to study and work in other countries. We believe that another benefit for teaching a language is that it helps to children to understand their own language and reinforce rules of both their native language and the language they are learning. It can help to reinforce grammatical terms in order for them to advance in both English and the Modern Foreign Language. 

Here our children have weekly lessons in French throughout Key Stage 2 using a wide variety of resources to facilitate this. We strive to embed the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing necessary to enable children to use and apply their French learning in a variety of contexts and lay the foundations for future language learning. Our MFL curriculum is designed to progressively develop children skills in languages, through regular taught lessons. Children progressively acquire, use and apply a growing bank of vocabulary organised around topics. This can also help with developing new words in the children’s first language. In order to develop language further we also have a range of French story books available in the library for children. As a school we will also plan links to develop their awareness of cultural differences in other countries. In particular, we focus on the language we are learning and focus on their lifestyles and celebrations.

As well as this the children will also have knowledge of French speaking cultures. As well as this, it is important that the children have an understanding of the language they are studying and time is taken to have understanding of the structure of the language and how the language differs from their first spoken language. We allow the children to link their learning to a number of other subjects and contexts for example in music by singing a range of French songs, using French money and comparing grammar rules to English.

It is intended that when children leave Ivington, they will have a natural curiosity and confidence to explore, other countries, cultures and languages, accepting that, in a multi-lingual society it is a valuable skill to be able to communicate effectively with others in another language.  They will be engaged and prepared to continue language learning at High School.

Implementation

How do we organise our teaching and learning?

Children develop their love of language learning and develop skills throughout their time in school. In KS2, children are taught in weekly sessions by their class teacher, whilst reinforcing their learning outside of lessons.  In Lower KS2 the children are introduced to French through music and picture books. This progresses to the written language as well as increased oracy in Upper KS2. We aim for our children to develop an appreciation of songs and stories in French throughout their time at the school.

As we acknowledge children’s different learning styles, our children learn through active participation in actions, rhymes, stories, song, grammar focus, video clips, sentence structure, dictionary work, book making and many more creative ways to extend, embed and combine language skills.

Impact

How does learning a language help our children to flourish?

Our French curriculum will ensure all pupils develop key language learning skills, as set out by the national curriculum, as well as a love of languages and learning about other cultures. These are as follows:

• understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources
• speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation
• can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt
• discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied