Robert Piggott Subject Overview: French

In an ever-more globally minded world, learning a foreign language is a liberation and provides an opening to other cultures and countries.  A high-quality languages education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. At Robert Piggott Schools, the teaching of French enables 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 also provides opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read great literature in the original language. Learning French at Robert Piggott also provides the foundation for learning further languages, as well as equipping pupils to study and work in other countries.

Curriculum Intent:

• Understand and respond to spoken and written languages 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 range of grammatical structures that they have learnt.
• Discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.

Implementation:

Our French curriculum provides a balance of spoken and written communication. It covers reading, writing and speaking skills as set out by the National Curriculum. Children are taught to read carefully, showing understanding of vocabulary, phrases and simple sentences. They listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding. This enables pupils to understand and communicate ideas, facts and feelings by speaking and writing, focusing on familiar routine matters, using knowledge and phonology. Children are also taught grammatical structures and key vocabulary to enable them to communicate effectively in a range of real-life situations and to varied audiences.

Part of the French curriculum incorporates learning about Francophone countries and thus encourages cultural awareness, understanding the Geography and History of these countries. Through the curriculum children learn to appreciate stories, songs, poems and rhymes in the language.

Lessons are planned and delivered in a variety of ways ensuring that all children can access and participate in lessons. Teachers use Language Angels’ presentation resources with native French speaking examples, in addition to differentiated written tasks. Songs, rhymes and games are also used to embed vocabulary and provide home learning opportunities. Interactive, practical activities encourage the children to discuss their ideas and develop their understanding of grammatical concepts and varied vocabulary. French learning is recorded in draft books and displayed around school.

Impact:

At Robert Piggott Schools, we aspire for our children to not only acquire the appropriate age-related substantive knowledge, but also to apply and understand the matters, skills and processes need for communicating effectively in French.

Pupils should be able 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.

By the end of KS2 we expect our children to be able to:

• Listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding.
• Engage in conversations; ask and answer questions; express opinions and respond to those of others; seek clarification and help.
• Speak in sentences, using familiar vocabulary, phrases and basic language structures.
• Read carefully and show understanding of words, phrases and simple writing.
•  Appreciate stories, songs, poems and rhymes in the language  broaden their vocabulary and develop their ability to understand new words that are introduced into familiar written material, including through using a dictionary.
• Write phrases from memory, and adapt these to create new sentences, to express ideas clearly.
• Describe people, places, things and actions orally
• Understand basic grammar appropriate to the language being studied, including (where relevant): feminine, masculine and neuter forms and the conjugation of high-frequency verbs.