Modern Foreign Language at Hardwick
Modern Foreign Language is about providing valuable social and cultural education for children. It fosters curiosity and excitement in their wider global community as well as inspiring a lifelong love of languages. It deepens pupils’ understanding of the world and ensures they have a strong cultural awareness.
It gives children opportunities to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. It also provides opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read literature in the original language. It provides the foundation for learning further languages and equips children to study and work in other countries.
Without it they would not have an opening to other cultures or communities or be liberated from insularity. Children would not be able to attempt to speak with confidence, fluency and spontaneity in the new language.
It feeds into our school’s curriculum intent by encouraging all children to orally rehearse spoken language using a variety of strategies, such as interactive role plays, games and songs and providing them with the tools they need to become independent learners. New vocabulary is constantly revisited to ensure children can retain this through fun strategies, such as listening activities and rhymes. First-hand experiences are included wherever possible, ensuring learning is embedded and understanding is broadened through practical sessions, for example, French food tasting sessions.
At Hardwick, our children enjoy learning French. French is taught across KS2. Our curriculum ensures that children learn new knowledge and skills and progress in these so that they become naturally inquisitive about the language, customs and geography of the country concerned and its relation to others around the world.
Our curriculum ensures that our children:
- 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, 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 learned
- discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.
In addition, children also take part in presentations and assemblies to celebrate their learning and promote the importance of learning new languages in school.
Please see below our curriculum progression grid for French, detailing how our children progress through knowledge and skills from Nursery to Year 6:
Useful Websites
www.crickweb.co.uk/ks2french.html - Fun online games and resources to help learn vocabulary
www.coolkidfacts.com/france-facts/ - Interesting facts about France
www.digitaldialects.com/French.htm - French language games-colours/numbers etc
www.bbcbitesize.co.uk - Lots of real-life scenarios with French children and more.
www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/countries/france.html - More fun and exciting facts about France.
www.spanishmama.com/french-songs-for-kids/ - Learn French through fun songs
https://bilingualkidspot.com/category/teach-french/ - More fun ways to learn French