French
The All Saints’ Way…
French Curriculum Intent...
Discovering God | Learning Together | Achieving Our Best
At All Saints’, we believe that learning a foreign language opens a window to God’s diverse creation and helps children become compassionate members of a multicultural society. Through language learning, pupils discover God’s world beyond their immediate environment, fostering curiosity, understanding, and respect for other cultures.
Our high-quality languages curriculum encourages children to learn together by expressing ideas, thoughts, and feelings confidently in another language. They develop the skills to listen, understand, and respond to native speakers in both speech and writing. Language learning also challenges pupils to think in new ways and communicate for practical purposes, preparing them for a future where cross-cultural communication is essential.
We aim for every child to achieve their best by building fluency, accuracy, and confidence. Children will:
1. Understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources.
2. Speak with growing confidence, fluency, and spontaneity, using discussion and questions to communicate effectively while improving pronunciation and intonation.
3. Write for different purposes and audiences using a variety of grammatical structures.
4. Discover and appreciate a range of writing in the language studied, deepening their cultural awareness and empathy.
By embracing language learning, our pupils are equipped not only to continue learning further languages but also to thrive in a global world—academically, socially, and spiritually.
Implementation
In line with the National Curriculum for MFL, pupils at All Saints’ are 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 clear
- 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.
This is done mainly through the weekly French lesson.
Impact
The MFL subject leader will regularly monitor the impact MFL teaching is having on the children’s learning, through work scrutinies and pupil voice, to ensure the progress of knowledge and skills is being taught. They will also ensure the knowledge taught is retained by the children and continually revisited and that the learners are able to apply the skills they have been taught to a variety of different settings, showing independence with their learning. Impact will also be measured through key questioning skills built into lessons, child-led assessment such as success criteria grids and summative assessments aimed at targeting next steps in learning.
