French at Our Lady's

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French Curriculum Intent

Learning another language has many benefits for both the individual and the wider community.  It helps to break down social barriers and encourages cross-cultural understanding, as well as helping the individual to boost their problem solving, memory, critical thinking and listening skills. Being able to speak a second language can even help improve understanding of areas such as grammar in their native language. 

At Our Lady’s we strive to develop children’s love of learning about other cultures and new languages. Through the regular teaching of  French, annual languages days, speaking French in our everyday routines and cross-curricular links with other subjects, we promote curiosity, problem solving skills and a deeper understanding of the people and cultures we share our world with. Children not only learn speaking and listening skills but also reading and writing, to enable them to use and apply French in a range of contexts and lay the foundations for the learning of languages in Higher Education.

The national curriculum for languages aims to ensure that all pupils:

1.  understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources

2. 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

3. can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt

4. discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.

At Our Lady’s we teach French as our Modern Foreign Language in KS2.

It is taught in a whole-class setting, using the Primary Language Network Scheme of Work.
The lessons are designed to motivate children from the first moment and have clear, achievable objectives and incorporate creative activities for different learning styles.
Each class has weekly timetabled lessons.
French lessons provide a variety of sources to model the language, use games, stories and songs to maximise enjoyment and make as many connections to real life situations as possible.
We focus on speaking and listening in Year 3- gradually developing skills in reading and writing in order to lay the foundations for foreign language teaching in KS3.

Each year, children build on the skills that they have already learnt and develop new ones through a range of fun, exciting and engaging activities:

• learning French vocabulary
• asking and answering questions, and following instructions in French
• reinforcing memory with mime and physical actions
• playing games and learning songs
• video clips
• using bilingual dictionaries
• teaching of basic French grammar, sentence structure and spelling patterns
• learning French phonics
• researching and learning about life in France
• writing phrases and sentences
• reading bilingual stories
• creative tasks to demonstrate learning

Our Lady's French Curriculum Overview

Our Lady's French Modern Foreign Languages Policy

National Curriculum- Languages Programme of Study

14th July French National Day, often known as Bastille Day

As a school, in Bubbles and through Home Learning, we had a great time celebrating the 14th July, as well as learning about French culture and practising our French speaking and listening skills. 

The Reception Bubble enjoyed a delicious French breakfast and imagined they were sat in a cafe in Paris, listening to French accordian cafe music and watching photos of Paris scrolling by on the screen. They also learnt some French greetings, food words and numbers before moving on to locating France of the globe and discussing places they could visit in Paris, such as Notre Dame and how it means Our Lady in English just like our school!

The Year 1 Bubble had a great time building their own Eiffel Towers out of spaghetti and marshmallows as well as used straws to make fireworks behind the Arc De Triomphe! They also enjoyed listening French music, creating French flags and learning to count to10 in French.

Our Key Worker Bubble, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4 and Year 5 enjoyed taking part in a range of Home Learning French activities including listening to stories in French, researching French culture and famous French people, creating art in the style of French impressionist artists, playing traditional French games and practising their French speaking and listen!