Foreign Language (French)

National Curriculum Purpose of Study

Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality languages education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. The teaching should enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. It should also provide opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read great literature in the original language. Language teaching should provide the foundation for learning further languages, equipping pupils to study and work in other countries.

National Curriculum Aims

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 writing in the language studied.

French at Eastwick

The foreign language (French) curriculum at Eastwick meets the requirements of the National Curriculum and the school’s Curriculum Ethos. It prepares children to be ‘Ready for Everything’ in their futures in terms of: 

• Success in the next stage of their education and beyond: by gaining a knowledge of French, with an appropriate balance of spoken and written language that lays the foundations for further foreign language teaching at key stage 3;  by enabling pupils to understand and communicate ideas, facts and feelings in speech and writing, focused on familiar and routine matters, using their knowledge of phonology, grammatical structures and vocabulary; 
• their ability to navigate life’s personal Challenge: by developing the confidence to engage in conversations; ask and answer questions; express opinions and respond to those of others; seek clarification and help
• understanding their place in communities at global, national and local levels and seize the Opportunity of the future: by learning and demonstrating the school values in how they collaborate in their learning; by fostering pupils’ curiosity and deepening their understanding of the world and other cultures.

Curriculum Content

• The National Curriculum states that children should start to learn a foreign language in Key Stage 2.  Therefore at Eastwick, children start learning French in Year 3.
• Our French curriculum follows a programme of study developed by the primary languages lead for The Howard Partnership Trust (THPT) and is used in primary schools across the Trust.
• Knowledge is built progressively throughout Key Stage 2. Pupils revisit the key knowledge themes (see below).  Each time a key knowledge theme is revisited, it is covered with greater complexity, therefore increasing children’s breadth and depth of knowledge.  Prior knowledge is recalled and utilised so that pupils build on previous foundations.    

Key Knowledge Themes: 

Numbers

Shapes and sizes

Time

Colours

Pets

Weather

Places

Our things

Clothes

Food

Culture

Sport

Opinions

Units taught (Years 3-6):