Modern Foreign Languages (MFL)

Intent

At Lugwardine Primary Academy we believe a high-quality languages education should foster children’s curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. We are committed to ensuring that competence and enthusiasm in learning another language enables children to interpret, create and exchange meaning within and across cultures. We endeavour to guide our children to become and grow as global citizens, developing skills that will open further opportunities later in life. The teaching of French in KS2 focuses on the 4 areas: ​ 

reading; writing; speaking and listening, and understanding the culture of the country. We provide an appropriate balance of these domains, laying the foundations for further foreign language teaching at KS3. Our catchment secondary schools also offer French as a language.  ​ 

The content of our MFL Curriculum is set out in our ‘Lugwardine Primary Academy MFL Progression’ document and is based on the lightbulb language scheme. This document outlines the curriculum objectives for each year group.  ​ 

We carry out curriculum planning in two main phases and based on our progression document: overviews and small steps.  ​ 

• The overviews are sequenced in such a way that children’s skills are built upon with each unit.   ​ 

• Small steps allow the teacher to break the overview into well-sequenced small steps. It also allows time to reflect on previous steps and where the children’s learning will take them. ​ 

• Overviews and small steps are kept and reviewed by the subject manager.  ​ 

We plan the activities in MFL so that they build on the prior learning of the children. We give children of all abilities the opportunity to develop their skills, knowledge and understanding in the four strands of the subject: reading, writing, speaking and listening, and understanding the culture of the country of France. MFL is taught for 40 minutes per week. ​ 

Implementation

At Lugwardine Primary Academy, KS2 children are taught in weekly sessions reinforcing their learning outside of lessons where possible.  We aim for our children to develop an appreciation of songs and stories in French throughout their time at the school. We begin every lesson with a recall session to revisit previous learning or vocabulary. ​ 

Our school follows the lightbulb languages scheme of work, which is adapted to meet the needs of our own children.  Teachers use the progression document to ensure the learning sequence has maximum effect: ensuring that it builds on prior knowledge and consolidates conceptual understanding and skills.  ​ 

Details of topics covered in each year group can be found in the vocabulary progression and unit progression document.  As we acknowledge children’s different learning styles, our children learn through active participation in actions, rhymes, stories, song, grammar focus, video clips, sentence structure, dictionary work, book making and many more creative ways to extend, embed and combine language skills. ​ 

Inclusion ​ 

At our school, we teach MFL to all children in KS2, whatever their ability and individual needs. MFL forms part of the school curriculum policy to provide a broad and balanced education to all children regardless of gender, ethnicity, culture, religion, language, disability, age, and social circumstances. We have high expectations of all children but understand some may take longer to grasp concepts and may need careful scaffolding or extra time/support.

Impact 

At Lugwardine Primary Academy, our French curriculum will ensure all pupils develop key language learning skills, as 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, 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

• write, 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. ​ 

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Teachers will assess children’s work using formative assessment. ​ 

All lessons begin with a recall session. The aim of this is to revisit topics that have already been covered and to ensure children have embedded knowledge. Formative assessment may also take place within the lesson and, for this, teachers are guided to the formative assessment ideas booklet. ​ 

Golden Threads 

• Culture and community 

• Speaking 

• Vocabulary 

• Comprehension 

• listening