Modern Foreign Languages

Modern Foreign Languages at St Anthony’s Catholic Primary

French overview 2023

European Day of Languages

In September, we celebrated the European Day of Languages by coming dressed in colours from a European flag. There were also some amazing fact files about European countries produced; many are now on display for all to admire! Here are some photos:

INTENT, IMPLEMENTATION AND IMPACT POLICY

Learning a foreign language is part of the primary National Curriculum and is a requirement for all children within key stage 2 (KS2). At St. Anthony’s Catholic Primary School, we teach French to all KS2 pupils; furthermore, there are opportunities for children at UKS2 to visit St Antonius primary school in Hamburg as well as to participate in Zoom calls and to write to penfriends.

At St Anthony’s we believe that learning a language teaches children to become effective, curious and confident communicators who relish opportunities to explore and appreciate other cultures and who are respectful and loving citizens of God’s Creation.

Intent

Our aim is to develop the confidence and competence of all St Anthony’s children in French so they are ready for the next phase of language learning.

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, 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 authentic writing in the language studied.

By the end of key stage 2, pupils should be able to:

1. Listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding.
2. Explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes and link the spelling, sound and meaning of words.
3. Engage in conversations; ask and answer questions; express opinions and respond to those of others; seek clarification and help.
4. Speak in sentences, using familiar vocabulary, phrases and basic language structures.
5. Develop accurate pronunciation and intonation so that others understand when they are reading aloud or using familiar words and phrases.
6. Present ideas and information orally to a range of audiences.
7. Read carefully and show understanding of words, phrases and simple writing.
8. Appreciate stories, songs, poems and rhymes in the language.
9. Broaden their vocabulary and develop their ability to understand new words that are introduced into familiar written material, including through using a dictionary.
10. Write phrases from memory, and adapt these to create new sentences, to express ideas clearly.
11. Describe people, places, things and actions orally and in writing.
12. Understand basic grammar appropriate to the language being studied, including (where relevant): feminine, masculine and neuter forms and the conjugation of high-frequency verbs; key features and patterns of the language; how to apply these, for instance, to build sentences; and how these differ from or are similar to English.

Our intent is to help St Anthony’s children develop and demonstrate substantial progress in the 4 key language skills necessary for learning a language, specifically French:

• Speaking
• Listening
• Reading
• Writing

We aim to ensure that pupils of all abilities develop solid foundations in these key language learning skills – properly preparing them for the next stage of their language learning journey. These skills will develop children’s ability to understand what they hear and read and enable them to express themselves in speech and writing.

Our intent is to support St Anthony’s children in developing a secure knowledge of the big concepts around language learning:

• Language is a very effective mean of communication and so:
• Knowing the sounds of the foreign language enables children to communicate more effectively. Repetition is a key element of sound acquisition.
• Knowing how to form structures (sentences with a verb and subject) enables children to communicate accurately. Grammar knowledge is a vital part of any language lesson.
• Knowing vocabulary to name things, places and people, to indicate actions and states and to describe nouns enables children to widen subjects of conversation.
• Knowing their own language (spellings, grammar, rules of punctuation) and comparing it to the foreign language they are learning enables children to develop a deeper understanding of language.

As they develop their skills and knowledge, through revisiting known structures and sounds, children will gradually know more, do more and remember more.

Implementation

All classes will have access to a high-quality foreign languages curriculum using the Language Angels scheme of work and resources. This will progressively develop pupil skills and knowledge in foreign languages through regularly taught and well-planned weekly lessons in KS2 which will be taught by class teachers or the PPA team.

Children will progressively acquire, use and apply a growing bank of vocabulary, language skills and grammatical knowledge organised around age-appropriate topics and themes – building blocks of language into more complex, fluent and authentic language.

Planning is over a two-year cycle and matched, as much as possible, to other subjects taught on a half-termly basis: for example when Y3/4 classes are learning about Romans in History, they will also learn to describe what Ancient Romans might have looked like in French.

Planning takes into account skills progression as well as children’s increasing knowledge of sounds, vocabulary and structures. Therefore, in Y3/4, the units covered are mostly Early Language units with some Intermediate units used in the Summer term. In UKS2, Intermediate are used mostly with Progressive units being the focus in the Summer term.

Children will build on previous knowledge gradually as their foreign language lessons continue to recycle, revise and consolidate previously learnt language whilst building on all four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Knowledge and awareness of required and appropriate grammar concepts will be taught throughout all units at all levels of challenge.

Early Learning units will start at basic noun and article level and will teach pupils how to formulate short phrases. By the time pupils reach Progressive units they will be exposed to much longer text and will be encouraged to formulate their own, more personalised responses based on a much wider bank of vocabulary, linguistic structures and grammatical knowledge. They will be able to create longer pieces of spoken and written language and are encouraged to use a variety of conjunctions, adverbs, adjectives, opinions and justifications.

Units are progressive within themselves as subsequent lessons within a unit build on the language and knowledge taught in previous lessons. As pupils progress though the lessons in a unit they will build their knowledge and develop the complexity of the language they use.

French lessons include:

• PowerPoints and interactive whiteboard materials
• Interactive games (which pupils can access from home to consolidate their learning)
• Songs
• Differentiated desk-based consolidation activities
• Worksheets (at three different levels of challenge) are provided throughout each teaching unit.

Impact

Impact is measured by the amount and accuracy of the language understood and produced by children as they progress through the units and years.

Pupils will continuously build on their previous knowledge as they progress in their foreign language learning journey through the primary phase. Previous language will be recycled, revised, recalled and consolidated whenever possible and appropriate.

Pupils will be aware of their own learning goals and progression as each unit offers a pupil friendly overview and unit core vocabulary sheets so that all pupils can review their own learning at the start and at the end of each unit.

Teachers will have a clear overview of what they are working towards and if they are meeting these criteria. They will use the long-term planning documents provided to ensure the correct units are being taught to the correct classes at each stage of the scholastic year. Short-term planning is also provided in the form of unit overviews (covering the learning targets for each 6-week unit) and individual lesson plans laying out the learning aims and intentions of each individual lesson within a unit. These planning documents ensure that teachers know what to teach and how to teach it in each lesson, across whole units and across each scholastic term.

Whilst Language Angels provides a complete assessment scheme, it is felt that children will benefit more from formative assessment which will allow teachers to have a secure understanding of where the children are at in their learning. End of unit assessments provided by Language Angels can be used occasionally to check a specific skill such as listening; however, an end of unit task such as a mindmap to show off the language children have acquired, a poster focused on one aspect of the unit learning or a clips of children conversing in pairs are preferable options as they also allow the children to assess and review their own learning.

A summative assessment is also completed at the end of each Language Angels unit and used to ensure children are on track. This is kept on a general Drive accessible by all teachers. As children move through the four years of KS2, teachers are able to ensure progress is happening. Children keep their French book over KS2, which effectively becomes a portfolio of their learning