Bienvenue to French at Albrighton Primary School!

French

How do we teach Modern Foreign Languages at Albrighton Primary School & Nursery?

Intent

At Albrighton Primary School, we believe that the learning of a language provides a valuable educational, social and cultural experience for our pupils. It helps them to develop communication skills, including the core skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. The children’s knowledge of how language works, phonology and elements of grammar will be developed and extended.  Lessons will enable pupils to make substantial progress in one language. The transferable language learning skills gained will assist and lay foundations for further language learning in secondary school and beyond. It will provide pupils with the confidence and independence to explore and be able to attempt manipulation of the structure of language. Learning another language gives children a new and broader perspective on the world, encouraging them to understand their own cultures and those of others.

Implementation

Our school follows the Primary Languages Network scheme of work to teach French. It is a live scheme which is continually updated and revised in order to meet with current curriculum standards. Alongside the planning provided, the scheme is supported by accompanying videos, PowerPoints, audio files (spoken by native speakers), links to authentic literature, songs, games, cultural points of reference, seasonal events and cross-curricular links.

The children in KS2 build up their knowledge and skills by working through the language learning stages from Stages 1 and 2 in year 3/4 to Stages 3 and 4 in Year 5/6. The scheme of work is progressive, with the foundations being laid in Stages 1 and 2, ready for further development and challenge in Stages 3 and 4.

To promote an active learning of languages a range of teaching methods are implemented to ensure that the children are developing their linguistic skills through listening, speaking, reading and writing in order to be secondary ready. Activities can consist of actions, rhymes, stories, song, drama, grammar focus, video clips, air writing, sentence structure, dictionary work, book making and many more creative ways to extend, embed and combine language skills.  Written work is kept in workbooks, although formal writing is not the outcome of every lesson. The skill of writing is developed through use of whiteboards and air writing leading to writing in books.  

Impact

Children are enthusiastic about French and well-engaged with the lessons. There is a clear progression of skills and knowledge across the key stage. Lessons are well-resourced with accurate models of grammatical structures and pronunciation. Teachers use their excellent knowledge of English grammar to support children’s understanding of French grammar. A range of activities including games and songs mean that children enjoy learning French and remember vocabulary. There are opportunities for children to listen to French as well as speaking, reading and writing in French.

Adaptive Teaching

Adaptive teaching means that teachers adapt their teaching to make it appropriate for all students in their classroom. This has replaced the term ‘differentiation’ quite recently which implied that teachers should create distinct tasks for different groups of students within the classroom. Adaptive teaching is about skilful teacher questioning, purposeful interventions and quality discussions with students. It recognises that some learners need more support than others to reach their learning goals while others need to be stretched. For French, this means that all children will receive Quality First Teaching (QFT) in the classroom across a series of lessons and both visual and auditory resources to maximise progress for all pupils. This can take the form of partnered and grouped work, in addition to a small step learning approach, such as: word banks, rephrasing of questions and compartmentalised sections in order to further knowledge and understanding.