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Modern Foreign Language

Why do we learn languages?

At Dewhurst St Mary, learning a foreign language provides an opening to other cultures. We believe we offer a high-quality language education which encourages pupils’ curiosity and deepens their understanding of the world. Our lessons enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to each other, both in speech and in writing. We also provide opportunities for our children to communicate for practical purposes, for example through roleplaying a French café  or shop. We hope that through this first step in learning French children have the foundation for learning further languages, equipping pupils to study and work in other countries.

Aims:

  • understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources.
  • speak with increasing confidence and fluency, 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 the children have learnt.
  • discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.

French is taught in a whole-class setting by the class teacher or our specialist language teacher.


French lessons include:
• PowerPoints and interactive whiteboard materials
• Interactive games (which pupils can access from home to consolidate their learning)
• Songs & raps
• Differentiated activities


Each lesson will focus on a combination of the 5 key language learning skills (speaking, listening, reading, writing and grammar).  The last lesson in each unit focuses on the key language skills and is used to support the teacher assessment (and self-assessment from the child) of the success criteria for each unit of work.


At Dewhurst St Mary, we use the Language Angels programme to support our French teaching. We have adapted the scheme of work to meet the needs of our children.

“To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world” Chinese proverb