Modern Foreign Languages at Holy Redeemer
Mission Statement: Through the Holy Redeemer, we seek to grow in faith and love, to become great people who make a difference in our world.
Our aim:
For children to: 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; be able to write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt; and discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied. All of this is underpinned by our whole school focus on Building Learning Power and on developing higher order thinking, with a particular focus on spoken language and vocabulary and on resilience and risk-taking; identified as key needs within our school context.
Intent:
Implementation
Children are introduced to French at the start of Key Stage Two, to enable them to develop language acquisition skills that facilitate their understanding of the patterns of language and how these differ from, or are similar to, English. Each class has a timetabled lesson of 30 minutes. Objectives from the National Curriculum (2014), support sequences of learning and the use of a specialist teacher across the subject, ensures progression of vocabulary skills, as well as understanding of the grammatical workings of the language and its written content.
Lessons support the skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing. Pupils are taught to:
- listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding.
- explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes and link the spelling, sound and meaning of words.
- engage in conversations; ask and answer questions; express opinions and respond to those of others; seek clarification and help.
- speak in sentences, using familiar vocabulary, phrases and basic language structures develop accurate pronunciation and intonation so that others understand when they are reading aloud or using familiar words and phrases.
- present ideas and information orally to a range of audiences.
- read carefully and show understanding of words, phrases and simple writing.
- appreciate stories, songs, poems and rhymes in the language.
- broaden their vocabulary and develop their ability to understand new words that are introduced into familiar written material, including through using a dictionary.
- write phrases from memory, and adapt these to create new sentences, to express ideas clearly.
- describe people, places, things and actions orally and in writing.
- understand basic grammar appropriate to the language being studied, including (where relevant): feminine and masculine forms and the conjugation of high-frequency verbs; key features and patterns of the language; how to apply these, for instance, to build sentences; and how these differ from or are similar to English.
Impact
Assessment of French is driven primarily by the response and engagement of each individual child. The specialist teacher, with the support of classroom learning assistants, support children to join in with individual, paired and group verbal and written activities. These are designed to provide feedback to the teacher, in terms of language and grammar acquisition, as well as the development of pronunciation. Children’s progress and learning is also recorded within written work, which is gathered within a French book. The book progresses with the child as they move through the Key Stage and is it marked regularly with feedback and comments made for each individual child. Within some of the year groups there is also the opportunity to participate within “language learning days” linked to feeder High Schools and cluster schools. Holy Redeemer also works in partnership with a local volunteer, who partly resides in France,
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A world of learners where children gain a passport to the world
‘We cannot teach people anything, we can only help them discover it within themselves’ Galileo Galilei