French at Charnwood

Intent

French at Charnwood is about more than just being able to say words in another language.  Our language lessons are about understanding how a language works, what similarities and differences there are between languages and how to be a confident communicator, having both strong speaking and listening skills.   

The first thing we look at is how everyone in the world communicates differently, from the way they say hello to the non-verbal greetings they use.  As we have many children who speak another language at home, we look at not only how French links to English, but to other languages too. 

We build our French knowledge in the same way that the children learn English – starting with phonic sounds, which we then blend to make words, before moving on to joining words to make phrases and then sentences, which increase in complexity over time. 

Children learn to listen, speak, read and write in French, with importance given to all four skills.  We sing, read stories, play games and learn about life in France and other French speaking countries.  

The Curriculum

Year Three

In Year Three we learn to make French sounds.  The curriculum focuses on introducing the key phonic sounds used in French through everyday French words covering topics such as greetings, numbers, days of the week and months of the year, as well as looking at how to introduce yourself to someone and find out about them.  On top of this we start to look at how word lists and bilingual dictionaries work, which allows greater independence as pupils move into upper Key Stage Two. 

Year Four

Year Four is all about learning how French works: getting in to the nitty gritty of the language.  We begin the year by comparing French and English to other languages, looking at what cognates are and how they can help us in our language learning.  As we progress through the year, we learn how to group nouns according to their gender using the categories of fruits and animals, which allows us to further embed the phonic sounds that we learned during Year Three.   We then look at how to make a singular nouns plural, again drawing comparisons with English, before looking at how to give opinions about things. 

Year Five

We begin Year Five by talking about the weather and learning about other French speaking countries in Europe. We progress the children’s knowledge of gender by looking at adjective agreement and position – this is done using the story Ours Brun which contains familiar vocabulary so that the focus can be on the grammar point.  The year then continues with the topic of sport, which allows us to look at sentence structure, negative sentences and adverbial phrases.  At this point in their language journey the focus moves from words and short phrases to more complex sentences, and some pupils will be able to produce some French writing from memory.  

Year Six

In Year Six the children should have a sound understanding of the basics of French and will be speaking and writing accurately.  We study the concept of adjective agreement further by looking at plural agreement, as well as looking at certain irregular adjectives. We take the opportunity to revisit many of the language concepts that have been covered in previous years, which allows us to ensure confidence in the language.  The topic on towns gives us the opportunity to think about French sounds again and allows complex sentence structures to be looked at.  We end the year by looking at how to conjugate French verbs, knowledge which really helps with the transition into Year Seven and Key Stage Three.