French
All children in Key Stage 2 have one lesson a week which is taught by subject specialist, Mrs Ryan.
Our aims
We believe that all children should be equipped with the necessary skills to learn a Modern Foreign Language inside and outside the classroom. We want to ensure that all our children strengthen their abilities to learn French, appreciate French culture and value being a global citizen.
How we teach French
Our French teaching is topic based: Food and drink, colours and clothes, classroom objects, animals, family and home, hobbies and healthy living. We use the Modern Foreign Language Framework, the Kapow scheme of work and “Chez Mimi” programme of work to provide a lively and engaging curriculum for the children.
The children are taught to listen carefully, to discriminate sounds at phonic level, to identify meaning and to develop auditory awareness. They are encouraged and taught to respond to auditory cues. Listening sources are supported by mime, gesture, visual clues and games.
Our focus is on authentic French accent by building pronunciation and intonation at word level and below. Every child is given regular opportunity and encouragement to speak the language through whole class songs, rhymes, etc.; choral repetition after teacher or other prompts; individual response to a question or visual cue; language produced in small groups cued by games, film clips; creative language generated by role play situations.
Reading and writing is a structured and gradual process. Children progress from recognition of sounds, to syllables, words, phrases and sentences. A hierarchy of grammatical structure is built upon recognition of noun phrases and verb phrases, and how to link them together into complex language. Reading skills are embedded using a variety of resources from flashcards to board games.
Our children as linguists
Our pupils frequently report enthusiastically and in great detail about their holidays to France: using words and phrases learnt at school as well learning new words and phrases, and also sharing their cultural, historical and geographical experience. The children enjoy their lessons and know why they are doing the activities; they are regularly given time to reflect on and talk about what they have learnt as well as sharing it with others; this in turn contributes to their personal development. Through developing positive attitudes to language learning at St Cecilia’s our children progress to secondary school with an interest in developing their knowledge of French as well as an interest to learn other languages.