French

At Gorseland, we aim to instil a love of language learning and an awareness of other cultures. We want pupils to develop the confidence to  communicate in French for practical purposes, using both written and spoken French.  

We aim to give pupils a foundation for language learning  that encourages and enables them to apply their skills to learning further languages, developing a strong understanding of the English language, facilitating future study and opening opportunities to study and work in other countries in the future.  

At Gorseland, we follow the Kapow scheme of work for French which fulfils the statutory requirements for Languages outlined in the National Curriculum while ensuring that it aligns with the guidance in the Ofsted research review series: languages (2021). It is designed with three knowledge strands that run throughout the units with knowledge building cumulatively. These are: 

• Phonics 

• Vocabulary 

• Grammar 

This knowledge can then be applied within the skills strands, which also run throughout each unit in the scheme: 

• Language comprehension (Listening and reading) 

• Language production (Speaking and writing) 

The skills strands align with the National curriculum aims for Languages which are:

• Understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources. 

• Discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied. 

• 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. 

Through our French scheme, pupils are given opportunities to communicate for practical purposes around familiar subjects and routines. Our curriculum provides balanced opportunities for communication in both spoken and written French, although in Year 3 the focus is on developing oral skills, before incorporating written French in Year 4 and beyond. The scheme is a spiral curriculum, with key skills and vocabulary revisited repeatedly with increasing complexity, allowing pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. 

Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work including role-play, language games and language detective work. 

The scheme of work focuses on developing ‘language detective skills’ and developing an understanding of French grammar, and key vocabulary rather than on committing to memory vast amounts of French vocabulary. Pronunciation is emphasised early on using our Mouth mechanics videos to support pupils with phoneme pronunciation in French. 

By the time they leave Gorseland Primary, children will:  

• Be able to engage in purposeful dialogue in practical situations (e.g., ordering in a cafe, following directions) and express an opinion.  

• Make increasingly accurate attempts to read unfamiliar words, phrases, and short texts.  

• Speak and read aloud with confidence and accuracy in pronunciation.  

• Demonstrate understanding of spoken language by listening and responding appropriately.  

• Use a bilingual dictionary to support their language learning.  

• Be able to identify word classes in a sentence and apply grammatical rules they have learnt.  

• Have developed an awareness of cognates and near-cognates and be able to use them to tackle unfamiliar words in French, English, and other languages.  

• Be able to construct short texts on familiar topics.  

• Meet the end of Key Stage 2 stage expectations outlined in the national curriculum for Languages.

Verbal feedback is given throughout French lessons to guide children on improving their language skills. Children complete quizzes at the end of the majority of lessons which assess the key knowledge from that lesson as well as prior knowledge from previous lessons. Teachers use the information gathered from these quizzes to address misconceptions and move the children's learning on. At the end of each unit, children complete a quiz which assesses the key knowledge from the whole unit. The children's quiz scores are used alongside teachers' observations of learning to form a termly judgment as to whether each child has met, exceeded or is working towards the expected standard in French.

Subject leaders monitor teaching and learning in their subject through observing teaching and learning in lessons, analysing the work produced by children, talking to samples of children in different year groups about what they know and remember from their learning and termly data analysis to track the progress of learning in their subject across the school.