Modern Foreign Languages
At James Watt Primary School we teach French to all children in Key Stage 2 according to the national curriculum. French lessons take place once a week and the children really look forward to them; this enthusiasm for knowledge is priceless.
We believe that it is important for children to experience a range of diverse cultures that they are unfamiliar with and learning French allows children to deepen their curiosity and have a greater understanding of the world. Our curriculum is designed in order to meet the following aims, as set out in the National Curriculum:
- 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.
In order to achieve these aims, we use Language Angels scheme of work that provides the opportunity to learn a variety of skills and vocabulary with resources that enable the children to hear the correct pronunciation. The children learn how to speak, read, and write French and develop their listening skills too. Each unit either builds on prior learning or introduces new vocabulary that will be revisited later on, enabling pupils to fully embed their knowledge and skills gained.
The result of this is that pupils are able to take part in a variety of conversations, can understand the main theme in a range of texts - including poetry, stories and newspapers - and are able to write for different of purposes with a basic understanding of grammatical function.
