Our French curriculum aims to instil a love of language learning and an awareness of other cultures. Through our curriculum, we aim to give pupils a foundation for language learning that encourages and enables them to apply their skills to learning further languages. Our French curriculum supports pupils to develop a foundational understanding of the French language so they can begin to develop the confidence to communicate in French.

Our French curriculum begins in KS2, and pupils complete six units of French per year from Years 3 to Year 6. Our French curriculum enables pupils to meet the National curriculum end of Key stage 2 attainment targets (there are no Key stage 1 attainment targets for Languages). Our curriculum is designed with three knowledge strands that run throughout our units with knowledge building cumulatively. These strands are: Phonics, Vocabulary and Grammar. Pupils are also taught the disciplinary skills of language comprehension (listening and reading) and language production (speaking and writing). Our curriculum offers balanced opportunities for communication in both spoken and written French, although in Year 3 the focus is on developing oral skills, before incorporating written French in Year 4 and beyond. Our curriculum focuses on developing what we term ‘language detective skills’ and developing an understanding of French grammar, and key vocabulary rather than on committing to memory vast amounts of French vocabulary.  Pronunciation is emphasised to support pupils with phoneme pronunciation in French.

Our French curriculum supports pupils to:

• Be able to engage in purposeful dialogue in practical situations (e.g., ordering in a cafe, following directions) and express an opinion.
• Make increasingly accurate attempts to read unfamiliar words, phrases, and short texts.
• Speak and read aloud with confidence and accuracy in pronunciation.
• Demonstrate understanding of spoken language by listening and responding appropriately.
• Use a bilingual dictionary to support their language learning.
• Be able to identify word classes in a sentence and apply grammatical rules they have learnt.
• Have developed an awareness of cognates and near-cognates and be able to use them to tackle unfamiliar words in French, English, and other languages.
• Be able to construct short texts on familiar topics.