At Carden Nursery and Primary School we believe in providing high quality, active, purposeful and experiential learning opportunities in different languages. Our aim is to engage and instil pupils with a love of learning and appreciation of other languages enabling them to be successful, confident multi-lingual citizens of the future. Our Core Values and Learning Journey Skills underpin our language rich curriculum which is mapped to include coverage of the national curriculum as well as numerous enrichment activities within school and use of opportunities within our wider community.
Our languages curriculum, that follows the scheme iLanguages, motivates pupils to be passionate risk takers when speaking other languages both in and out of school. We want to encourage a sense of curiosity to enable pupils to make links between languages; to understand shared history and to use knowledge of other languages to enhance English skills and vocabulary. We believe that the languages curriculum should be embedded throughout the day, both in and out of the classroom. We value, respect and celebrate the diverse range of languages spoken within our community. Our ultimate goal is for our learners to have a global positive mind-set towards all languages that will facilitate opportunities for now and in the future.
At Carden, we use a high-quality foreign languages scheme of work, iLanguages to teach French. Embedded in the scheme are the skills progression of all the key skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing and grammar through well-planned lessons that that include games, songs, interactive activities and stories. The children’s skills are developed through weekly teaching in KS2 with accompanying audio from a native speaker to support with pronunciation. Children build on previous knowledge gradually as their foreign language lessons continue to recycle, revise and consolidate previously learnt language.
All of the lessons have clearly defined objectives and aims, they incorporate interactive activities to allow for speaking and listening, have challenge sections to stretch their learning, as well as independent activities for reading and writing of various difficulty to support each child’s learning needs.
The lessons are underpinned by our school’s Learning Journey Skills and Core Values, giving children opportunities to be creative, kind, take risks, show independence, curiosity and perseverance in their learning. The history and evolution of French and English are studied and links between the two languages are drawn upon across the whole curriculum and in assemblies to support pupils with seeing connections, consolidating knowledge and improving vocabulary choices.
In addition to learning French, over 20 languages are spoken within the Carden community. We encourage children to share key words and phrases with each other and adults in order to celebrate our rich and diverse community.
The outcome of teaching French as a foreign language is that pupils increase their level of challenge, stretch and linguistic and grammatical complexity, moving from introductory units through to intermediate units and into the most challenging progressive units in Y6. This will enable them to feel more confident in speaking, reading and writing in French. By developing these skills, pupils will be able to use and apply their learning in a variety of contexts, laying down solid foundations for future language learning. Pupils will continuously build on their cognitive ability, using their previous knowledge as they progress in their foreign language learning journey. Overtime their confidence, fluency and enthusiasm for French and the learning of languages will grow, allowing them to use their skills to communicate with people from all around the world, to travel around the world and to feel confident and work in settings where their language skills are an asset.
