‘Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures.’

Intent

At Curbar Primary School, we believe that learning a foreign language is a necessary part of being a member of a multi-cultural society and provides a valuable opening to other cultures in our local, national and global communities. Our languages curriculum encourages all pupils to communicate for practical purposes and express their ideas in another language.  French is currently taught across all ages and abilities in KS2. The lessons are practical and fun in order to foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world.  We use songs and games to aid memory and pronunciation. We have developed and regularly use phonics sessions to help children with the accuracy in pronunciation. The teaching will enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. It is our belief that good language teaching should provide the foundation for learning further languages, equipping pupils to study and work in other countries and within other cultures.

• We encourage an understanding of other cultures
• We challenge stereotypes and intolerance through the teaching of language and culture.
• We encourage pupils to work independently in lessons and proactively use the target language in classwork, whether through paired work, co-operative learning techniques or group work.
• We encourage pupils to experiment with language and learn from their mistakes.
• The Exploration of language and culture is key to language learning,
• Pupils are encouraged to embrace ‘difference’ at all stages of their language development and accept ideas which may be ‘alien’ to them, as culturally significant.

Implementation

We have carefully designed our own languages overview, which follows a two year cycle. This is so we can incorporate topics, which are important to our school, as well as design a scheme for all KS2 pupils to learn French.