At Hillborough, all year groups learn French and are taught by a specialist teacher. The curriculum is progressive and children learn how to say their name, colours, animals, food and family in the lower school, moving on to having conversations and writing in French in the upper school. We offer the opportunity of a trip to France where children can practice their skills and speak the language, and our Ski Trip is also based in the French Alps. We have many children that are already bilingual and we hope to be able to show our children the value of learning another language and offer them the opportunity to develop basic skills in French before extending this knowledge or potentially learning other languages in Secondary School.
Key stage 2: Foreign languages
Teaching may be of any modern or ancient foreign language and should focus on enabling pupils to make substantial progress in one language. The teaching should provide an appropriate balance of spoken and written language and should lay the foundations for further foreign language teaching at key stage 3. It should enable pupils 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.
The focus of study in modern languages will be on practical communication. If an ancient language is chosen the focus will be to provide a linguistic foundation for reading comprehension and an appreciation of classical civilisation. Pupils studying ancient languages may take part in simple oral exchanges, while discussion of what they read will be conducted in English. A linguistic foundation in ancient languages may support the study of modern languages at key stage 3.
Pupils should be taught to:
- listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding
- explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes and link the spelling, sound and meaning of words
- 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
- develop accurate pronunciation and intonation so that others understand when they are reading aloud or using familiar words and phrases*
- present ideas and information orally to a range of audiences*
- 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* and in writing
- understand basic grammar appropriate to the language being studied, including (where relevant): feminine, masculine and neuter forms and the conjugation of high-frequency verbs; key features and patterns of the language; how to apply these, for instance, to build sentences; and how these differ from or are similar to English.
The starred (*) content above will not be applicable to ancient languages.
|Year 3||Greeting and introductions|
|Days of the week|
|Year 4||Where do you live?|
|Talking about brothers and sisters|
|Year 5||Where do you come from?|
|Wider family (revise pets)|
Menu and buying food
|Year 6||Simple descriptions|
|Leisure (with a little more focus on verbs)|
Over the four years we also learn structures in spoken and written French, such as:
- I have/I don't have
- I like/I don't like
- I am
- I would like