At St. Peter’s C of E Primary School, we see our language learning as a celebration of culture. We focus our weekly lessons on the language of our nearest neighbours across the channel: French. Of course, French is a language spoken around the world and it opens doors to countries and a huge variety of global communities.
Interactivity sits at the heart of our French curriculum and each lesson encourages us all to get involved with using the language practically. Our schemes of learning are based around the five core principles of language learning: speaking, listening, reading, writing and phonics; each unit of learning provides a balance of these core skills.
Traditional tales, songs and rhymes are shown to help children retain and remember key vocabulary and patterns of language and they’re also great fun! Each term, we learn French songs related to our learning and have the opportunity to explore real French books, which helps us make links between our languages and French, embed our reading skills and learn new vocabulary.
By the time we leave school in Year 6, it is our aim that we have a secure understanding of conversational French, as well as a growing understanding of grammatical constructs and key vocabulary (colour, number, etc.), all of which will help us to communicate effectively and practically. This will all help build the foundations for language learning in Secondary School and beyond. By learning a new language and understanding the culture from which it originates, the world really is our oyster!