Modern Foreign Languages

"With God, all things are possible" Matthew 19:26

At Crowton Christ Church C.E. Primary School, we believe that the learning of a foreign language provides a valuable educational, social, and cultural experience for children. Children develop communication and literacy skills that lay the foundation for future language learning. They develop linguistic competence, extend their knowledge of how language works, and explore differences and similarities between the foreign language (French, in our case) and English. Learning another language raises awareness of our multi-lingual and multi-cultural world and introduces an international dimension to pupils’ learning, giving them an insight into their own culture and that of others. The learning of a foreign language provides a medium for cross-curricular links and for reinforcement of knowledge, skills, and understanding developed in other subjects.

Intent

We teach our children German to generate a fascination for words and how language works, a wider curiosity about the peoples and cultures of German speaking countries and the foundational knowledge to support confident communication in German.

Essential Knowledge

We teach three core strands of essential knowledge:

1. Phonics – the key components of the sound-writing relationship

2. Vocabulary – a set of the most frequently used words

3. Grammar – the essential building blocks required to create simple sentences independently (including gender of nouns, singular and plural forms, adjectives (place and agreement), and the conjugation of key verbs)

Our German curriculum is designed to enable our children to:

• Develop linguistic and communicative competence

• Extend their knowledge of how language works

• Explore similarities and differences between [name of language], any heritage languages our children have, and English The teaching of a foreign language to every child in KS2 is a statutory requirement, as set out in the National Curriculum Programmes of Study (2014).

In line with the National Curriculum Programme of Study, our children learn to:

• Listen and show understanding by joining in and responding

• Link the sound, spelling and meaning of words

• Read aloud with accurate pronunciation

• Read and show understanding of phrases and simple texts

• Speak in sentences

• Describe people, places, things in speech and writing

• Ask and answer questions

• Express opinions

• Write phrases from memory

• Adapt phrases to create new sentences

• Use a dictionary

Implementation

Throughout their time in school, children develop both their love of learning languages and their language learning skills. We want to enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and writing. Our KS2 children have a weekly German lesson of 60 minutes. In addition, they re-visit and deepen their learning for 5-10 minutes every day with structured language tasks that practise retrieval, improve retention and embed learning in long-term memory. Further opportunities to recycle key vocabulary (e.g. numbers) and develop children’s confidence are often built into classroom routines including greetings, providing instructions, stating lunch preferences, registration, rewards and praise on a more regular basis, even just for a few minutes in the school day e.g. when children are lining up. A detailed scheme of work with audio-enabled resources for every lesson is provided in order to minimise unnecessary teacher workload. Teachers may, if they wish, adapt the resources to support active engagement and meet different learning styles for different cohorts of children. All children irrespective of ability or special educational need, should be taught a foreign language. Every child has the statutory right to a broad and balanced curriculum. A child with SEN should be actively encouraged to participate fully in MFL lessons with the necessary support and appropriate differentiation. Teaching modern foreign languages is a vital way to directly address pupil perceptions and potential stereotypes. It allows us to actively promote positive attitudes and values towards cultural and or religious diversity and to directly tackle any form of cultural and negative stereotyping.

Impact

Our German curriculum will ensure all pupils develop key language learning skills, as set out by the National Curriculum, as well as a love of languages and learning about other cultures.

These are as follows:

• To introduce young children to another language in a way that is enjoyable and stimulating.

• To understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources.

• To develop listening, speaking, reading and writing skills so that children speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, asking and answering questions and that they can write at varying length for different purposes.

• To encourage children to be aware that language has a structure and that structure differs from one language to another.

• To deep children develop their awareness of cultural difference in other countries.

• To stimulate and encourage children’s curiosity about language.

• To lay the foundations for future language learning.

Children are continuously assessed on the knowledge they are taught in lessons, whenever they are called upon to understand and/or produce language, without reference to resources. Periodically they complete achievement tests in phonics, vocabulary and grammar covering all modalities (i.e. listening, speaking, reading and writing), which assess the specific knowledge they have been taught.

Their progress and attainment is categorised in the following way, using our school tracking system:

[=] Meeting expectations A child has learnt and retained the majority of phonics, vocabulary and grammar knowledge taught this term

[+] Above expectations A child has learnt and retained all of the phonics, vocabulary and grammar knowledge expected this term, and has shown additional capacity for extending his/her knowledge.

[-] Below expectations A child has learnt and retained less phonics, vocabulary and grammar knowledge than expected this term.