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 2014
French is not taught as a discrete subject in Key Stage 1, however, language activities are introduced to the children on an ad hoc basis through themed activities and topics.
At Heptonstall school, Lower Key Stage 2 are taught for 30 minutes and Upper Key Stage 2 45 minutes a week, both of which are taught by the class teacher using the Twinkl Scheme.
Children are taught many topics including, Greetings, All about Me, What’s for dinner and so forth. However, we do not want teachers to rush to ‘cover’ the Units. Rather, we believe that to develop mastery in a language will involve a “focus on achieving a deep understanding of fewer topics”.
To support this ‘mastery learning’ the skills, grammar, structures and vocabulary are revisited in different themes throughout the Key Stages. The learning relies on high-quality modelling of language, visual, auditory and kinaesthetic inputs, many opportunities for pupils to practise manipulating the language, especially in pairs, and on-going assessment of progress against clearly defined outcomes.