Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) Curriculum at Geoffrey Field Junior School

 

The aim of our MFL curriculum

At Geoffrey Field Junior School, we believe that learning a foreign language provides the children with a valuable educational, social and cultural experience. Learning a language enriches the curriculum, providing excitement, enjoyment and challenge for children and helps to develop positive attitudes to language learning throughout life.

By the end of Key stage 2, we aim for the children to be confident readers, writers, speakers and listeners of the French language.  

 

Our MFL Curriculum

At Geoffrey Field, French is taught, but we encourage children to share words and phrases they may know in other languages or languages that they may speak at home. 

We use a scheme of work called Salut! which is organised into interesting topics for the children and allows them to progress through these 4 key skills throughout their time at Geoffrey Field Junior School:

• Listening
• Speaking
• Reading
• Writing

Pupils will have the opportunity to experience and practise all of these skills across a variety of contexts such as French food and culture, talking about themselves and others, and other familiar topics.  They learn new vocabulary in each unit and work towards building this into sentences and conversations.  They are taught in a variety of fun and engaging ways such as through stories, songs, games and poems.  Learning builds as the children progress through the school and the children have time to revisit their learning frequently as this ensures children become confident and proficient in the language they are learning.

Children are assessed against the 4 skills throughout each unit and at the end of the year.  

 

GFJS Local Curriculum

At Geoffrey Field, we have developed a localised curriculum, which focuses on areas of importance and barriers for our pupils. These key areas are woven into our MFL curriculum, to ensure our pupils receive a full, rich and engaging curriculum which is suited to their needs.

MFL supports our local curriculum at Geoffrey Field Junior School in the following ways:

• Oracy – children have the opportunity to practise new vocabulary and to review previous learning in a number of ways including songs, poems, games with partners and in groups, presentations and modelled conversations.  There is an oracy session in each lesson when previous learning is reviewed and new learning is introduced. 
• Understanding and awareness of the wider world – Children learn about France and French-speaking countries. They also learn the names of some countries in French.  This is introduced in year 3 core units and revisited in year 5 and 6 when talking about holidays.   
• Vocabulary – This is core part of the MFL curriculum.  Lessons always build in the opportunity to revisit and review previous learning and the learning of new vocabulary in small and manageable chunks.  
• Cultural experiences – Children have the opportunity to choose a country that they are interested in to study during a workshop on our celebration of International Languages Day.  In these workshops there is an element of language learning as well as an experience of the culture.  This includes things such as looking at artists, music, dance, food, sports and religion of those countries.  Parents are also  invited into school to share stories in their native language with the children. 
• A love of reading – Children have access to dual language books in their classrooms and in the library.