MFL - Modern Foreign Language - French
At Irlam Primary, we believe that learning another language is one way for children to gain a new and broader perspective on the world, encouraging respect for other cultures as well as an understanding of what makes our own culture so unique. As we do not have many pupils with other languages in our area, it is essential that awareness of other cultures and exposure to another language is provided in school. This is now more important than ever with the ever-increasing reliance on technology and the valuable information available on the internet that is in languages other than English.
Our school follows and adapts an online programme in the teaching of MFL. This programme helps our pupil to develop skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing with the aim of them making substantial progress in their abilities to communicate in all of these areas. Learning how other languages are used will also help our pupils develop foundations to learn other languages by increasing their awareness of universal grammar. By learning French ad listening to stories from those cultures that speak French, pupils are able to investigate countries that use French as a main language and further develop the communication skills that are essential to becoming a valuable global citizen. This feeds into our school ethos to develop respectful and inclusive enquirers.
Children are given opportunities to develop a love for learning another language as well as their skills throughout the year. In KS1, opportunities are given to learn greetings and colours. In KS2, class teachers teach French on a weekly basis. Further details of what is being taught is available on the long term plans of each year group on the school website. Our pupils embed their knowledge of French through an active combination of stories, songs, actions, rhymes, games and videos to help increase the development of speaking and listening skills as well as grammar focus lessons, using bi-lingual dictionaries, making books and posters, writing sentences using increasingly difficult structures among other activities to help develop reading and writing skills. We also celebrate Culture Day annually where each year group investigates a different country and its culture.
Our KS2 pupils have an active Duolingo account which allows them to access French learning from home, either for homework or in the eventuality that a bubble has to isolate. They are encouraged to do this regularly and weekly updates of progress are received by the MFL co-ordinator. Many of the songs we use are accessible on youtube and so many of our pupils are able to access these online.
Our French curriculum ensures that all pupils develop key language learning skills, as set out by the National Curriculum, as well as developing a love of learning languages and learning about other cultures.
The national curriculum for languages aims to ensure that all pupils:
- 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
- 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