Languages

French

At Longwell Green, we aim to promote a lifelong love of foreign languages by adopting a fun approach teaching sounds and vocabulary through French nursery rhymes and games in KS1.  Children continue to build on their knowledge of French through short greeting exchanges and progress their skills of phonology and vocabulary in a range of topics so that by the end of Year 2, they can write some simple sentence structures in preparation for the formal learning of the target language (French) in Year 3.

In Key stage 2, through their termly topics, children will explore in more depth the French alphabet and phonemes relating to their topic vocabulary in order to help them to read, write and spell in the target language.  They will broaden their vocabulary and they will begin to formally develop their ability to respond to both spoken and written language confidently.  They will learn grammatical structures, linked to their native language, to enable them to write simple and compound sentences in their target language by the end of Key Stage II.

Children will also develop their intercultural understanding of French speaking countries through the intercultural lessons spread across the KS2 curriculum.   They will learn about France, its geography and history, culture and traditions. In these lessons, children will be encouraged to have a respectful and positive interest in the values and culture of other countries embracing cultural differences and openly discussing stereotyping and biases. 

Children will have the opportunity to practise the target language by exchanging work with our link school near Toulouse.  They will take part in inter-school and national competitions such as the U-Talk Language Games Challenge, where they will communicate and socialise with pupils from other schools and they will be exposed to other languages and cultures building on the all-important appreciation of different countries and their cultures.