Languages

At Mary Elton our Community and Values based Curriculum embraces the importance of developing an interest and curiosity of other cultures. We want our children to see learning a Modern Foreign Language as a natural extension of this. We see learning a language as the gateway and vehicle to this end. We teach French, as it a language that is spoken across the globe and enables our children to celebrate and welcome differences in our world. We have links with Reunion Island and intend to build on this opportunity to broaden our teaching of French and Francophone cultures, in the French speaking world.

We want our children to be able to read and communicate verbally and in written form in French, using a variety of sources and cultural relevant resources. We sequence language knowledge and skills via a coherent scheme, so children can build on previous learning and so build accuracy and fluency. We have ensured it also supports pronunciation and intonation. We help children grow in confidence through teaching new vocabulary and grammatical structures, alongside lots of reinforcement. So enabling them to widen their opportunities to communicate in ways and on things that interest them.

We create possibilities for our pupils, to also communicate with children from the French speaking world and celebrate important events and activities. This is done to give French agency, by providing different audiences and so inspire a love of language as part of their lifelong journey of learning in being a Global Citizen. This allows us to provide cross-curricular opportunities, with which to provide quality speaking, writing and reading opportunities that extend our children’s skills and knowledge. This in turn supports our intention to create new ways of thinking, which promotes questioning and discussion. We want our children to access great French literature and so have a French library. Finally, we want our curriculum to inspire our children to see learning one language and discovering its diverse culture capital, as a stepping stone to learning others and engaging as a Global Citizen.

By the time a pupil leaves Mary Elton Primary School in Year 6, as French speakers, they will be able to do the following:

• Talk about themselves and their interests
• Ask simple questions verbally
• Respond verbally to simple questions using extended sentences 
• Have a working bank of common vocabulary and phrases
• Sing some songs in French
• Translate simple sentences and use a bi-lingual dictionary to support this
• Write simple sentences and use a bi-lingual dictionary to support this
• Pronounce French words correctly
• Have an understanding of French grammar and how it differs from English
• Have an understanding of French culture and life and that in some other Francophone countries
• Have an interest in other languages and understand how they can be empowering

For more information, please see the Languages overview (Pdf) and Languages skills ladder (Pdf).