French
Our Vision
We aim to make learning French fun and inspiring for all children by:
- Exploring and Experiencing: Discovering French language and culture through bite-size learning of songs, stories, and activities.
- Developing Skills: Practising speaking, listening, reading, and writing in French to grow confidence and build important language skills.
- Finding Inspiration: Learning about traditions and cultures within France and other French-speaking countries.
- Being Confident Learners: Encouraging everyone to try new words, pronunciations, and keep improving year on year.
Children will enjoy exciting opportunities like:
- Taking part in French-themed events, such as tasting French food or celebrating special holidays like Bastille Day.
- Creating colourful French displays in classrooms and around the school to share what they have learned.
Through these activities, we create a fun, lively and interactive environment to bring the French language and culture to life.
Intent
Pennington C of E Primary School’s teaching of the French scheme of work aims to instil a love of language learning and an awareness of other cultures.
We have adopted Kapow as our chosen scheme, it is designed to help pupils develop the confidence to communicate in French for practical purposes, using spoken and written French. Through our scheme of work, 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. The French scheme of work supports pupils to meet the National curriculum end of Key stage 2 attainment targets (there are no Key stage 1 attainment targets for Languages).
Implementation
At Pennington C of E Primary School, our French scheme of work is designed with three knowledge strands that run throughout our units with knowledge building cumulatively. These are:
- Phonics
- Vocabulary
- Grammar
This knowledge can then be applied within our skills strands, which also run throughout each unit in the scheme:
- Language comprehension (Listening and reading)
- Language production (Speaking and writing)
Our lesson plans are mapped to the National curriculum and identifies our incorporation of 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. Through the French scheme, pupils are given opportunities to communicate for practical purposes around familiar subjects and routines.
The scheme provides balanced opportunities for communication in both spoken and written French. KS2 have started together in 2024 focusing on developing oral skills, before incorporating written French from 2025. The scheme is 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.
Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work including role-play and language games. Teaching mediums blend flash cards, interactive props, hand-outs videos of native French speakers and presentation slides.
Impact
At Pennington, the impact of the scheme can be monitored continuously through both formative and summative assessment, which support teachers in assessing pupils against the learning objectives. After the implementation of French, pupils should leave school equipped with a range of language-learning skills to enable them to study French, or approach learning any other language, with confidence at Key Stage 3.
The expected impact of following the French scheme of work 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.
- Use a bilingual dictionary to support their language learning.
- Be able to identify word classes in a sentence and apply grammatical rules they have learnt.
- Have developed an awareness of cognates and near-cognates and be able to use them to tackle unfamiliar words in French, English, and other languages.
- 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.