Modern Foreign Languages – curriculum information

At Pearson Primary School we believe that the learning of another language provides a valuable social and cultural experience.  Many of our pupils come to school already speaking another    language, most of which have English as their second language.  We celebrate this within school by encouraging them to share their language with other pupils, and value the support of parents who come into school to read stories, learn pupils songs and rhymes in their home languages.

The aims of learning a MFL

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.
• 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.

During the year we hold international days were all children learn and experience other languages and cultures.  In KS2 all children have a weekly French lesson and this is then picked up at the end of year 6 were the children study a unit of French preparing them for their transition to Key Stage 3.

The delivery of French within school will be very practical  giving children a vast range of opportunities to explore and develop their communication skills.

Within lessons, children will be taught to:

• Listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding.
• Explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes.
• Engage in conversations, ask and answer questions, express opinions and respond to those of others.
• Speak in sentences using familiar vocabulary

The children will also be involved in reading and writing activities but the main focus will be developing their speaking ability in French.