Modern Foreign Languages

How Modern Foreign Languages are taught at Hillbourne Primary School

At HIllbourne Primary and Nursery School, all children in key stage 2 are given the opportunity to study a French language curriculum that will inspire and excite our pupils. We aim for the foreign language knowledge of our pupils to progress each academic year in the four key language learning skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing. The curriculum is organised into teaching units, which each focus upon a particular topic, allowing children’s language to be developed through a familiar topic.

Our curriculum focusses on developing 3 key pillars of language learning: phonics, vocabulary and grammar. Our pupils must learn the sounds, vocabulary and grammar of the language, and be able to understand and produce these when they are combined. There are similarities between learning to read and write in our first language and leaning to do so in another language and our curriculum draws on our expertise in teaching English to teach French. A specific phonics lesson is the first lesson taught each year, focussing on particular French sounds the children will need to know to support their pronunciation, reading and writing. These sounds are then revisited and revised throughout the year to ensure children have a secure phonic knowledge. High frequency vocabulary is key, and these words develop the foundation of children’s French knowledge as they are experienced across all French lessons. Our teaching units have been organised in a way to ensure that vocabulary is repeated across units, as it is easier for children to remember vocabulary when it appears across a variety of topics. Grammar is explicitly taught within each lesson and is revised systematically to ensure that the taught concepts and structures are embedded in pupils’ memory. Planned practice and review of these three elements are at the centre of language teaching and support children to build upon their previous knowledge.

The children will be taught through a varied and engaging range of activities to develop a genuine interest and positive curiosity about foreign languages and other cultures and communities around the world as global citizens. Through acquiring a new language, it also enables pupils to become more confident communicators and learners. Through language lessons at Hillbourne School, we are striving to help all children develop: a love of learning new skills; courage to use these skills in a variety of contexts both in and out of school; deepening their sense of unity with the wider language rich world and inspiring others to become lifelong language learners.

We want children leaving Hillbourne school to be able to:-

  • understand and respond to spoken and written language
  • speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say
  • write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt
  • have the knowledge and cultural capital to succeed later in life and to appreciate and celebrate difference
MfL Concept Map
MFL Progression of Knowledge