Modern Foreign Languages Rationale

At Church Lench CE First School, French is taught on a two-year rolling cycle to ensure full coverage of the National Curriculum while providing pupils with a broad, engaging and progressive introduction to language learning. Our curriculum has been carefully designed to develop pupils' confidence in listening, speaking, reading and writing French through meaningful, real-life topics that become increasingly challenging as pupils move through the school. 

French is taught in Classes 2 and 3, where pupils revisit key language structures whilst continually expanding their vocabulary, grammatical understanding and conversational confidence. The curriculum is organised around engaging and familiar topics that are relevant to children's lives. Pupils learn to introduce themselves, talk about family and friends, describe their school, discuss food preferences, tell the time, talk about places, shopping, holidays and hobbies, gradually broadening their ability to communicate about the world around them.

Our curriculum has been designed to meet the requirements of the National Curriculum and enables pupils to:

• Develop confidence in listening to, speaking, reading and writing French.
• Acquire and apply a growing range of vocabulary and everyday language.
• Understand and use basic French grammar, sentence structures and pronunciation.
• Engage in simple conversations and ask and answer questions with increasing confidence.
• Appreciate similarities and differences between English and French.
• Develop curiosity and enthusiasm for learning languages and exploring other cultures.

Throughout each unit, pupils develop their ability to communicate for a genuine purpose. They begin by learning and rehearsing key vocabulary before progressing to speaking in short sentences and reading familiar texts. Regular retrieval opportunities ensure previously taught vocabulary and language structures are revisited, helping pupils to develop fluency and long-term retention.

Across the two-year rolling programme, learning is carefully sequenced so that vocabulary, phonics, grammar and sentence-building skills are introduced progressively and revisited regularly. Each new topic builds upon prior learning, allowing pupils to retrieve previous knowledge whilst extending their ability to communicate in increasingly varied contexts. This cumulative approach develops both confidence and competence.