Languages

Languages

Vision

Excellence achieved through care, creativity and challenge.

Intent

Our languages curriculum aims to provide pupils with a secure foundation in French to build upon at secondary school and beyond. Pupils will leave with the ability to understand and communicate in spoken and written French at a foundational level and with an enthusiasm for learning languages and understanding other cultures. Through their learning, a King’s Hedges pupil will also gain an appreciation for intercultural understanding, becoming tolerant and understanding members of their community.

Implementation

French teaching is delivered in KS2 through discrete, half-hour, weekly lessons planned and delivered through the ‘Rigolo’ resource. The curriculum is progressive and provides opportunities to revisit and interleave vocabulary across the units, with regular retrieval practice to secure knowledge. This provides full curriculum coverage and a ready-made resource to support teachers’ high-quality delivery and to provide pupils with engaging activities to support their learning. Each half-term, an ‘Apply it!’ session is taught to provide pupils with the opportunity to apply their new learning to a range of written, spoken, aural and comprehension activities. As well as regular opportunities to explore French culture throughout the units, a discrete termly session on an aspect of French culture is delivered to further develop pupils’ intercultural understanding.

Pupils are provided with opportunities to develop in the following key purple strands: linguistics; oral and written communication; comprehension and intercultural understanding. Within the linguistics purple strand, pupils are taught a range of skills including: French phonics, alphabet, spelling, vocabulary, cognates, grammatical rules, verb forms and tenses. Links and comparisons are also made with their English grammar and spelling learning. The correct use of bilingual dictionaries is also taught, so that pupils are increasingly independent in using them to support their comprehension and communication, as well as expanding their French vocabulary. These transferable skills will also support pupils in learning other languages.  Pupils are provided with regular opportunities within ‘Rigolo’ to hear native French speakers, leading to accurate pronunciation; pupils are given regular opportunities to apply these skills in oral responses and conversations. Intercultural Understanding is a purple strand, due to the diverse catchment demographics; making links and comparisons with other cultures is key to building tolerance and understanding within the school community and beyond. Pupils are encouraged to make links not only between French and British cultures, but also with the cultures of their own families, friends and communities. Adaptive teaching groups enable language learning to be delivered effectively to all children whilst following the same progression, for example by providing more regular retrieval practice and interleaved learning for some, whilst providing others, working at greater depth, opportunities to independently expand their vocabulary, alongside additional opportunities to write, read, speak and respond to longer, more complex passages and conversations.

Impact

Pupils become increasingly confident in understanding and communicating in French, leaving KHEF with the skills to communicate at a foundational level through speaking, listening, reading and writing. Pupils are more tolerant and have an interest and appreciation of other cultures. Pupils are able to make links with their language learning and their knowledge of English, enabling them to more confidently make linguistic connections and learn future additional languages. Termly assessment sessions, in addition to half-termly ‘Apply it!’ lessons enable teachers to assess against the KPIs, ensuring that gaps and misconceptions are addressed and to inform planning of future units. Knowledge Organisers are used by pupils to self-assess their understanding; these are kept in pupils’ language folders, so that pupils can refer back to previous units during lessons, ensuring that linguistic rules and vocabulary are further embedded and that links with prior learning can be easily made.

Enhancements

Links with teachers from local secondary schools and native speakers are provided, as well as whole-school assemblies to enhance pupils’ learning.

French Progression