Foreign Language (French)

National Curriculum Purpose of Study

Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality languages education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. The teaching should enable 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 should also provide opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read great literature in the original language. Language teaching should provide the foundation for learning further languages, equipping pupils to study and work in other countries.

National Curriculum Aims

The national curriculum for languages aims to ensure that all pupils:

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

French at Eastwick - Intent

The foreign language (French) curriculum at Eastwick meets the requirements of the National Curriculum and the school’s Curriculum Ethos. It prepares children to be ‘Ready for Everything’ in their futures in terms of: 

• Success in the next stage of their education and beyond: by gaining a knowledge of French, with an appropriate balance of spoken and written language that lays the foundations for further foreign language teaching at key stage 3;  by enabling 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; 
• their ability to navigate life’s personal Challenge: by developing the confidence to engage in conversations; ask and answer questions; express opinions and respond to those of others; seek clarification and help
• understanding their place in communities at global, national and local levels and seize the Opportunity of the future: by learning and demonstrating the school values in how they collaborate in their learning; by fostering pupils’ curiosity and deepening their understanding of the world and other cultures.

French at Eastwick - Implementation

• The National Curriculum states that children should start to learn a foreign language in Key Stage 2.  Therefore at Eastwick, children start learning French in Year 3.
• Our French curriculum follows a programme of study developed by the primary languages lead for The Howard Partnership Trust (THPT) and is used in primary schools across the Trust.
• Knowledge is built progressively throughout Key Stage 2.  For each unit, the following is identified:
  • 'knowledge end points' ('I know (that)...' or 'I know how to...' outcomes that children are expected to master by the end of the unit)
  • ‘substantive knowledge strands’ (key themes and vocabulary that form the basis of children’s mental mind maps or schemas, which enable pupils to recall and build on prior knowledge)
  • 'disciplinary knowledge', which is taught implicitly and enables children to ‘walk in the expert’s shoes’.
• Pupils revisit the substantive knowledge strands as they progress through the school.  Each time a strand is revisited, prior knowledge is recalled before it is covered with greater complexity or in a different context, therefore increasing children’s breadth and depth of knowledge.  
• Across Key Stage 2, pupils are taught three units per year. This equates to one unit per term. 
• Provision is made for all pupils, including those with SEND, by a specialist French teacher providing providing suitable access arrangements as part of their 'Quality First Teaching' offer, adapting resources and activities to meet individual children’s needs.

Curriculum Progression

Please visit the Subject Progression Documents page for details of curriculum progression in knowledge end points, substantive knowledge strands and disciplinary knowledge from Years 3 to 6. 

French at Eastwick - Impact

• The French subject leader, in conjunction with senior leaders and others, carries out monitoring of provision. This takes the form of pupil voice, lesson observation and work scrutiny.  
• We know that teaching is impactful on children’s progress when:
  • children demonstrate that they have built progressively complex ‘schemas’ in their long-term memory for each of the substantive knowledge strands. This is demonstrated when they can recall prior knowledge and learning, and master the knowledge in each progressive step in the curriculum because they have mastered the knowledge gained in previous steps and built on it
  • children show increasing mastery of disciplinary knowledge as they progress through the curriculum
  • children therefore show that they 'know more and remember more' after each unit of learning.