Miss Seabridge

At Knowle CE Primary Academy, we view a high quality languages education as a gateway to deepening pupils’ understanding of the diversity of cultures that make up our worldwide society. It should also foster their curiosity for other ways of living and communicating. Our teaching of French enables pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and helps them to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. We provide opportunities for our pupils to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and experience and appreciate literature in the original language. Our teaching of French provides the foundation for learning further languages, inspiring pupils to consider studying and working in other countries.

Our curriculum intent – the knowledge and skills we expect our pupils to learn – can be found in our Long Term Plans and Medium Term Plans (see below)

At Knowle CE Primary Academy, children in Key Stage Two will have access to a high-quality foreign languages curriculum that follows the Language Angels scheme of work and resources. The scheme of work meets all objectives taken from the national curriculum. Teaching and learning will progressively develop children’s skills in French through regularly taught lessons, taught by class teachers.

Following our French Long-Term Plan, both ‘deep dive’ and ‘shallow swim’ units of work take place. Children will progressively acquire, use and apply a growing bank of vocabulary, language skills and grammatical knowledge. Where possible, units are linked to overarching themes for each year group and key questions are used within each unit as a line of enquiry. Language angels lesson blocks have been carefully selected which offer the appropriate level of challenge and stretch for each year group.

Early language units, followed by Year 3, provide an entry level into French for our children who have little or no previous French learning. Intermediate units, followed by Year 4 and 5, increase the level of challenge by increasing the amount and level of complexity of the language that is presented to the children. The progressive unit is followed by children in Year 5 and 6 which provides further challenge and an increase in the language taught.

‘Deep dive units’ provide opportunity for the children to experience weekly lessons lasting for 30-45 minutes. Shallow swims focus on learning (in Year 3) and consolidating (in further years) core vocabulary through songs and games within Language Angels. Where deep dive units are taught, children will build on previous knowledge as their French lessons continue to recycle, revise and consolidate previously taught language, whilst building on the four key language skills. The four key language skills that are focused on are: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Teachers are provided with our long-term plan which demonstrates clearly how children progress in their French learning skills and are taught the correct grammar at the right time in their learning journey.

Each year group is provided with and follow medium-term planning, containing an overview of units to be taught. Each unit contains 6 lessons which includes clearly defined objectives and aims. Lessons begin with revisit and reminding the children of prior learning and previous lessons taught. Following this, lessons incorporate whole class interactive whiteboard materials including speaking and listening tasks. Reading and writing activities will take place during each lesson giving the children opportunity to apply the skills taught, with stretch and challenge activities available. Levels of differentiation are also used to support children who need further support in their learning.

In addition to lessons taught, WOW events linked to the subject take place throughout the key stage. One example of this includes our Year 5 French café where, at the end of their unit of learning ‘Au Café’, pupils carry out tasting of French food and children complete a piece of writing in English lessons linked to this. In addition to this, starting in 2022, we plan to introduce a French day across the key stage.

Insight tracking is used to assess the children against the criteria provided by Language Angels in addition to The National Curriculum. Teachers update Insight each half term, assessing the children against objectives taught and a teacher judgement is given at the end of the academic year. Due to the nature of the Language Angels scheme, all teachers will know where every child is at any point in their foreign languages learning journey. The progressive nature of the children’s French books and records of the children speaking each year provide opportunity for teachers to see where the children have come from.