Modern Foreign Languages Intent Statement:
The intention of the MFL curriculum at Birches First School is that children are taught to develop an interest in learning other languages in a way that is enjoyable and stimulating. We encourage children’s confidence and strive to stimulate and encourage children’s curiosity about language which develops their love of learning about other languages and cultures. We strive to embed the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing which are vital to enable children to use and apply their French learning in a variety of contexts and lay the foundations for future language learning.
Modern Foreign Languages Implementation:
Our chosen MFL is French. We have used the National Curriculum to create a bespoke and tailored curriculum to support the learning of our pupils. It progressively develops children skills in languages through weekly lessons, giving them the confidence to speak French with others. Children progressively acquire, use and apply a growing bank of vocabulary. Our long-term planning ensures progression throughout school.
In planning, we actively plan links to develop children’s awareness of cultural differences in other countries alongside our British Values and curriculum enrichment opportunities. A variety of cross-curricular links have been embedded into our French curriculum to link our learning together. Geography, PSHE and History have all been incorporated into French to allow pupils to identify and explore links between France and the wider world.
Children are encouraged and supported to develop their speaking and listening skills through conversational work, singing activities and games to aid memory and recall. As confidence and skills grow, children record their work through pictures, captions and sentences. Within the classroom, opportunities are identified beyond the taught MFL lesson for skills to be developed. For example, instructions being given in French. Visual prompts and word mats are used to support children in translating new vocabulary and to support them with their learning.
MFL is assessed in speaking, reading and writing. We strive to ensure that our pupil’s attainment is in line or exceeds their potential when we consider the varied starting points of all our children.
MFL is monitored by the subject leader throughout Year 3 and 4 using a variety of strategies such as lesson observations, staff discussions and pupil interviews. Feedback is given to teachers and leaders use the information to see if the children know more and retain more.
Impact:
Our MFL curriculum will ensure all pupils develop key language learning skills set out by the national curriculum, as well as a love of languages and learning about other cultures.
These are as follows:
- understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources
- speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity 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