MFL (French)

Intent

At Marlcliffe, we have chosen French as the focus of our MFL curriculum because it is a global language, lending many words to the English language, and many of our pupils visit France for holidays. The majority of local secondary schools offer French as their language of choice, which allows continuity for our children.

Our curriculum drivers at Marlcliffe include shaping the children into global citizens and supporting them to be confident communicators; both are covered throughout our MFL curriculum. There are 5 main aims for our MFL curriculum:

• Children develop a love of learning languages
• Children develop accuracy with speaking, listening and writing in a foreign language (French) at an appropriate level for KS2
• Children learn vocabulary that is both useful for adult life and relevant to them as learners at Marlcliffe
• Children are exposed to the culture and lifestyles of people in both France and other French-speaking countries
• Children develop an awareness of the phonics and grammar rules that exist within a different foreign language (French), which can also be applied to learning other languages beyond their time at Marlcliffe

Implementation

At Marlcliffe, the French curriculum is split by year group (as opposed to being split by phase like our other foundation subjects). This enables children to learn fundamental knowledge at the appropriate time; for example, everyone begins Year 3 by learning to say hello, introduce themselves and count to 10. Concepts and knowledge are constantly revisited to allow children to remember more of what they have learned and build on prior knowledge effectively; for example, basic colours are taught early in Year 3 and then revisited when learning how to use adjectives in a sentence (in Year 4) and how gender can affect the spelling of words in Upper KS2. Throughout all years of the curriculum, learning is linked to the lives of French speaking people (in France and other countries, such as Cote D’Ivoire), with important celebrations, life in French cities and significant sporting events being some of the subjects covered.

The school does not rigidly follow a commercially available scheme, allowing us to shape the curriculum around the needs and interests of Marlcliffe learners.

Although the content of lessons builds year on year, progression through the curriculum is implemented between phases:

• In Years 3 and 4, there is more of a focus on confidence with phonics and pronunciation, orally composing sentences and having conversations. In Years 5 and 6, children are expected to apply what they already know to write in sentences.
• In Years 3 and 4, children become aware of gender as a concept that applies to words and they learn different variations on the same base word (e.g. ‘le’, ‘la’ and ‘les’ all mean ‘the’). In Years 5 and 6, children learn how to apply this knowledge to sentence writing, learning new spellings for prior vocabulary to match the context of the sentence (e.g. ‘blanc’ to describe masculine nouns and ‘blanche’ if the noun is feminine).

Outside French lessons, children are also encouraged to apply what they know to everyday life; for example, sometimes the dinner register is completed in French to practise using colours in context. There is also a French word of the week, which is introduced during the weekly class briefing, giving pupils the opportunity to learn useful phrases that don’t fit within the context of a curriculum block and giving our younger children early exposure to the language. Extra-curricular lunchtime language clubs are also offered by external practitioners on a half-termly basis. These can vary from term-to-term and have included French, Italian and Spanish in recent years.

Impact

By the end of their Marlcliffe journey, pupils should be able to do the following in the French language:

• Have basic conversations to get to know new people
• Read new and unfamiliar words by applying their knowledge of phonics
• Apply some of the rules of word gender to sentences, both spoken and written
• Understand how to structure some sentences, including knowing the correct way to order different word types
• Feel confident pronouncing and identifying the meaning of a wide range of words about a number of different topics

By learning French for 4 years on their Marlcliffe Journey, we hope our pupils are inspired to explore the wider world when they’re older and immerse themselves in other cultures, both in the French-speaking world and beyond.