Highnam Church Of England Primary Academy

Inspiring Everyone to Shine

Wetherleigh Drive, Highnam, Gloucester, GL2 8LW

01452 525872

admin@highnam.gloucs.sch.uk

Modern Foreign Languages

Intent

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. 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.

It is our intent at Highnam Primary Academy to provide our children with a high-quality education in Modern Foreign Languages (MFL), which develops their love of learning about other languages and cultures. Our current MFL taught is French, however, we strive to provide children with opportunities to experience a range of other languages. It is our intention to ensure that by the end of our children’s primary education, they have acquired an understanding of both spoken and written French, confidence to speak in French with others and know how important other languages can be in their future. We feel strongly that it is vital to prepare children to be a global citizen both now and in their future roles within a global community.

 

Implementation

Our MFL curriculum progressively develops language skills, through regularly taught lessons. This allows the children to acquire new language then use and apply it in a range of different scenarios and topics. Children are encouraged and supported to develop their speaking and listening skills through conversational work, singing activities and games. As their confidence and skill grows, children record their work through pictures, captions and sentences. 

Children have weekly lessons in French with their class teacher throughout Key Stage 2, using the Language Angels programme of study in addition to other resources.  This is a clear and comprehensive scheme in line with the national curriculum. Each of the teaching units contain six teaching lessons with weekly lessons lasting approximately 30 minutes.

We approach the teaching and learning of foreign languages like ‘language lego’. Start with small blocks of language knowledge, increase the number and complexity and encourage pupils to put the blocks together to create complex, adventurous and amazing linguistic structures. Areas taught include: numbers, colours, house and home, animals, food and drink, the classroom, clothes and hobbies. 

 

Impact

Our MFL curriculum will ensure our pupils:

  • Develop key language learning skills set out by the national curriculum, as well as a love of languages and learning about other cultures.
  • Speak with increasing confidence and fluency, 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.
  • Write a limited amount of French, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of vocabulary that they have learnt.

 

The large majority of children will achieve age related expectations by the end of the year.