Our Modern Foreign Languages Curriculum Intent
“Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality languages education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world” (National Curriculum 2014 programme of study for Languages).
The 2014 National Curriculum for Modern Foreign Languages aims to ensure that all children:
· Understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources.
· Are able to speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and that they are 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.
At Newsome Junior School we are committed to ensuring that competence in another language enables children to interpret, create and exchange meaning within and across cultures. It also helps children develop skills that will open further opportunities later in life. The teaching of French in years 3 – 6, provides an appropriate balance of spoken and written language and lays the foundations for further foreign language teaching at KS3.
Implementation
Children are introduced to French from Year 3 and receive a weekly 30 minute lesson, throughout their time in school. This enables the children to develop early language acquisition skills that facilitate their understanding of the patterns of language and how these differ from, or are similar to, English.
Teaching and Learning
· Providing resources and setting tasks of different complexities, matched to the ability of the child.
· Setting common tasks which are open-ended and can have a variety of responses.
· Providing speaking and writing frames to scaffold responses.
· Using a range of questioning
Planning and Resources
The school has adapted the ilanguages scheme, to provide teachers at all levels of French with a weekly plan, to ensure that French is taught with accuracy and confidence.
The resources include:
Other resources such as dual language books, online activities are also used to support in the teaching of French.
Impact
Our MFL curriculum ensures that children develop their knowledge of where different languages, including the range of home languages spoken by the families of the school, as well as French, are spoken in the world.
Varied learning experiences, also ensure that languages are celebrated throughout the school community whilst providing a context for language learning and develop the children’s understanding of different cultures. This ties in with other curriculum areas including PHSCE, RE, History and Geography.
The children are assessed continually throughout the year, with the teacher giving feedback through marking and verbal feedback.
This process is supported by the end of KS2 statements in the National Curriculum 2014.
We use the Target Tracker assessment tool in school to make teacher assessed judgements as to where the children are which allows us to assess both progress and attainment across the key stage.
Parents receive assessment information regarding MFL in yearly reports.
Equal Opportunities
At Newsome Junior we are committed to promoting equal opportunities irrespective of socioeconomic background, gender, disability and ethnicity in all areas of the curriculum. We believe all children should have access to participate in the learning of languages and to be supported in this process.
Inclusion
At Newsome Junior School, we teach a modern foreign language to all children. A modern foreign language forms part of the school’s commitment to providing a broad and balanced education to all children. Through our modern foreign language teaching, we provide learning opportunities that enable all children to make progress. We do this by setting suitable learning challenges and responding to each child's different needs.