Mrs L Noone
MFL Lead
Mrs A Baille
French Specialist
Intent
At St. Mary’s, we understand that learning a Modern Foreign Language (MFL) deepens children’s curiosity and understanding of the world, and provides an openness to communicate with other cultures. It is our intention to deliver high quality and stimulating teaching and learning in MFL through the teaching of French. In our MFL lessons, we build upon the experiences of our diverse school population and the children are given the opportunity to express their ideas and thoughts in another language. The teaching is contextualised and aims to develop confident and creative learners both able to understand and respond to written and spoken French, laying the foundation for further study at KS3.
Aims
- Understand and respond to spoken and written language
- Develop oracy – speak with increasing confidence and fluency, continually improving the accuracy of pronunciation and intonation
- Write at varying length for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures learnt.
Implementation
Here at St Mary’s, we are extremely fortunate to have a native French speaker on staff delivering dynamic and engaging lessons across the school. Mme. Baille is originally from the suburbs of Paris and offers a unique cultural dimension to the teaching of French at St Mary’s. We are also privileged to have a truly multi-cultural school community and the experience that all our children bring to French language lessons is both inimitable and valuable.
Children from Years 1 to 6 have French lessons every week. The lessons are fun and practical, including games, songs and drama to help embed the learning. Mme. Baille uses visual representation of objects to introduce new vocabulary and the children have ample opportunity to practise speaking, listening, reading and writing (at appropriate levels). Mme. Baille explains the etymology of French words and the context of how words are used to help build the cultural capital of our learners. Our children receive high quality feedback and plenty of encouragement to help develop their confidence as learners of the French language.