Languages

Intent

At The John Wesley CEM Primary School, MFL should be fully inclusive to every child. Our aims are to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for MFL, which should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. The teaching should enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. It should also provide opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes in our chosen language which is French.

The aims of teaching Modern Foreign Languages in our school are to:

• Understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of sources
• Speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation
• Can write for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt
• Discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied

Implementation

To ensure good standards of teaching and learning in MFL, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout Key Stage Two. MFL is taught in discrete lessons covering at least one unit per half term.

The MFL curriculum at JWS is based on the National Curriculum, which provides a broad framework and outlines the knowledge and skills taught. Teachers plan lessons for their class using our MFL program ‘Language Angels’. A variety of teaching approaches are used based on the teacher’s judgement.

In MFL, skills in speaking, reading and writing another language are developed through a multi-sensory approach such as rhymes, songs, stories and repetition. In Upper Key Stage Two, children begin to develop their understanding of grammar in another language.

Impact

Our MFL curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills and discreet vocabulary progression also form part of the units of work.

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Observing children speaking and listening in another language
• Images and videos of children completing speaking and listening activities
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice)
• Learning walks

The MFL subject leader will continually monitor the impact MFL teaching is having on the children’s learning through work scrutiny to ensure the progress of knowledge and skills is being taught.