St Patricks RC Primary School, A Voluntary Academy

FL - Foreign Languages

Curriculum Intent Statement

Learning a Foreign Language (FL) helps supports children in increasing their understanding of living in a multi- cultural society. It provides an opening to other cultures and fosters curiosity about the wider world.

St Patricks RC Primary School uses the Primary French Project scheme of work and resources to ensure we offer a relevant, broad, vibrant and ambitious foreign languages curriculum. The intent is that all pupils will develop a genuine interest and positive curiosity about foreign languages, finding them enjoyable and stimulating. All pupils will be expected to achieve their full potential by encouraging high expectations and excellent standards in their foreign language learning - the ultimate aim being that pupils will feel willing and able to continue studying languages beyond key stage 2.

The four key language learning skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing will be taught and all necessary grammar will be covered in an age-appropriate way across the primary phase. This will enable pupils to use and apply their learning in a variety of contexts, laying down solid foundations for future language learning. In addition, the children will be taught how to look up and research language they are unsure of and they will have a bank of reference materials recorded in their books to help them with their spoken and written tasks going forward.

National Curriculum:

The national curriculum for maintained schools in England stipulates that the teaching of foreign languages is required at key stage 2 (ages 7–11) and key stage 3 (ages 11–14).

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 authentic writing in the language studied.

By the end of key stage 2, pupils should be able to:

1. Listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding.
2. Explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes and link the spelling, sound and meaning of words.
3. Engage in conversations; ask and answer questions; express opinions and respond to those of others; seek clarification and help.
4. Speak in sentences, using familiar vocabulary, phrases and basic language structures.
5. Develop accurate pronunciation and intonation so that others understand when they are reading aloud or using familiar words and phrases.
6. Present ideas and information orally to a range of audiences.
7. Read carefully and show understanding of words, phrases and simple writing.
8. Appreciate stories, songs, poems and rhymes in the language.
9. Broaden their vocabulary and develop their ability to understand new words that are introduced into familiar written material, including through using a dictionary.
10. Write phrases from memory, and adapt these to create new sentences, to express ideas clearly.
11. Describe people, places, things and actions orally and in writing.
12. 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.

We follow the EYFS framework and National Curriculum which set out what children should know by the end of each key stage. 

Early Years Foundation Stage Framework