Welcome to French at Highfield
Aims
At Highfield Primary School, we pride ourselves in being a multicultural school with over forty-two different languages spoken by our children and staff. Our aim is for all pupils to develop a genuine interest and positive curiosity about foreign languages, predominantly French. We believe that learning a second language will offer pupils the opportunity to explore relationships between language and identity, develop a deeper understanding of other cultures, cultural differences and the wider world around them. The intention is that pupils will feel able and encouraged to continue studying languages beyond Key Stage Two and ultimately work towards becoming life-long language learners.
The four key language-learning skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) will be taught through weekly lessons and all necessary grammar will be covered in an age-appropriate way across Key Stage Two. Children will explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes and are encouraged to link the spelling, sound and meaning of words. They also listen to spoken language modelled by our fluent French teacher and demonstrate their understanding by joining in and responding during conversations. There is an appropriate balance between spoken and written language to build children’s language competence and to consolidate previously taught linguistic skills. Our children are also able to practise and expand their knowledge at home through the use of Linguascope; a language platform that caters for a wide range of learning styles.
To delve deeper into the French culture and language, Highfield have a very popular French Club consisting of children across Key Stage Two. Children have the opportunity to broaden their vocabulary, enhance their understanding of popular French traditions and improve the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation.
International Day is a significant event in the Highfield calendar. The aim is to promote mutual respect amongst the various cultures and celebrate the the diversity of our school community.
Year 3 : We cover the beginnings of the language, learning greetings, numbers, dates, games
and French songs and poems,
Year 4: We start to look in more depth about descriptions, French stories, customs, foods,
Poetry and in the Summer term we will be exploring the topic of Sports
Year 5: Through the stories of Tintin’s adventures, we learn about various transports. The next term’s topic, La Belle au Bois Dormant, is more grammatical and we begin to look carefully at sentence structure. The final topic is very popular: Pocket Money.
Year 6: In Year 6 the lessons focus on verb tenses, French culture and Main events from French History.
French
For more details about the French National Curriculum, please follow this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-languages-progammes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-languages-progammes-of-study
Useful Website: https://www.linguascope.com/ The username and password can be found on Google Classroom.
