Intent

At Horsell Junior School, many of our children speak several languages in their daily lives.  We aim to build on the rich diversity of languages in our school by instilling a love of language learning and a deeper awareness of other cultures.  All of our pupils learn French from Year 3 to Year 6.

At Horsell Junior School, 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.  Through learning an additional language, we strive for our children to demonstrate our Horsell learning behaviours of being Articulate, Brave and Collaborative.

Implementation

Our French curriculum is designed using two schemes of work: Kapow and The Language Gym (Gianfranco Conti). It is designed with three knowledge strands that run throughout different units with knowledge building cumulatively. These are:

● Phonics

● Vocabulary

● Grammar

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

● Language comprehension (Listening and reading)

● Language production (Speaking and writing)

Pupils are given opportunities to communicate for practical purposes around familiar subjects and routines. The 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.  Key skills and vocabulary are revisited repeatedly with increasing complexity, allowing pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Cross-curricular links are included throughout the French units, allowing the children to make connections and apply their language skills to other aspects of their learning.

Impact

Teachers monitor pupils' progression in French continuously through both formative and summative assessment, and their attainment in French is reported in end-of-year reports.

When pupils leave Horsell Junior School, they 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.