At St Leonard’s Lower School, we are growing and learning together with God’s Love and our Christian values are embedded in all that we do.

We recognise that every child is a unique individual within God’s creation and it is our aim is to provide learning opportunities that enable our children to develop deep roots to enable them to flourish and succeed. 

Our French curriculum is ambitious and inclusive for all, enabling each child to learn and develop the skills and knowledge they need to prepare them for their next steps in learning. 

Our aim is to promote spiritual, moral, social and cultural understanding through appropriate curricular opportunities with particular reference to equality and diversity.

Intent

We use Kapow Primary’s French scheme of work.

Our French curriculum aims to instil a love of language learning and an awareness of other cultures. We want our children 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.

Our French teaching supports pupils to meet the national curriculum end of Key stage 2 attainment targets.

Implementation

The Kapow scheme of work is a spiral curriculum designed with three knowledge strands running throughout:

- Phonics

- Vocabulary

- Grammar

This key knowledge is then applied in our key skills:

- Language comprehension (listening and reading)

- Language production (speaking and writing)

Our French scheme of work is designed with six strands that run throughout. These are:

• Speaking and pronunciation

• Listening

• Reading and writing

• Grammar

• Intercultural understanding

• Language detective skills

National curriculum mapping shows which of our units cover each of the National curriculum attainment targets as well as each of the strands.

Our Progression of skills and knowledge shows the skills and knowledge that are taught within each year group and how these skills develop to ensure that attainment targets are securely met by the end of Key Stage 2. 

Our children are given opportunities to communicate for practical purposes around familiar subjects and routines. There are 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. 

French is taught in a spiral curriculum, with key skills and vocabulary revisited repeatedly with increasing complexity, allowing pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Cross-curricular links are included throughout our French units, allowing children to make connections and apply their language skills to other areas of their learning.

Weekly French Lessons in Key stage 2 incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work including role-play, language games and language detective work. Our scheme of work focuses on developing what we term ‘language detective skills’ and developing an understanding of French grammar, rather than on committing to memory vast amounts of French vocabulary.

Lessons can be accessed and enjoyed by all. In order to help pupils, retain their French learning, we provide information about how to incorporate French into the classroom environment every day in our ‘During the week’ extras.

We believe that strong subject knowledge is vital for our Key Stage 2 staff so that they are able to deliver a highly effective languages curriculum. Kapow's teacher videos and pronunciation presentations support by developing subject knowledge providing ongoing CPD. We use Kapow's presentations and sound files to deliver the lessons and to support the children's learning.

In addition to our KS2 core curriculum learning we offer French and Spanish clubs at school. These are delivered by specialist language tutors from La Jolie Ronde. You can find out more here:

La Jolie Ronde - French & Spanish classes, clubs & resources

Impact

We monitor progress through both formative and summative assessment. Each lesson includes guidance to support teachers in assessing pupils against the learning objectives. An assessment spreadsheet is used to record children’s progress in each lesson to enable us to build a picture of their learning through each unit.

After the implementation of Kapow Primary French, pupils should leave school equipped with a range of language-learning skills to enable them to study French, or any other language, with confidence at middle school and beyond.

The expected impact of our French curriculum is that 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. 

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

 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.