The National Curriculum for languages sets out the principles for study which at Strand we’ve applied to the teaching of French as a modern foreign language (MFL).

Children learn the beginnings of the language, both spoken and written, and also increase their knowledge of France’s geography and culture.

As Britain’s nearest neighbour, France is a destination that many of our learners experience first hand. It is also a major language of international relations that is spoken on every continent. 

Through a process of presentation, production and practice, teaching continuously focuses on listening and speaking as children learn to respond to what they hear and develop their capacity to express ideas in French.

Alongside these practical skills of verbal communication, content also includes accurate reading of the language as well as writing familiar words, phrases and sentences.

The Strand French curriculum develops three core threads of learning: 

Pronunciation: the speech sounds and articulation of the language. This includes a focus on important differences from English.

Vocabulary: knowledge and recall of word meanings 

Grammar: the rules, patterns and conventions that govern word order, word forms and sentence structure

These threads are interwoven into a series of thematic units. In Year 3, themes include the alphabet, numbers and the family. By Year 6 children are taught to give directions and how to tell the time in French. An aspect of French culture is studied in each year group. This includes a focus on different localities within France. 

Organisation

French is one of our subject specialisms. This means it is taught by a subject expert, not the class teacher. Our bi-lingual specialist provides French to every class across the school for a half hour lesson. In order to timetable this, we run a rolling programme through which three year groups receive French lessons in a half term. That means that over the course of an academic year, Year 3 and 6 have four blocks of weekly French lessons and Year 4 and 5 have five half-termly blocks of French. Where specialist teaching is not scheduled, time is allocated to consolidate and practise prior learning through sequenced video lessons and activities that recall previous teaching.

 Continuity of study

Beyond Year 6, Strand children transfer to over 20 different secondary settings. This makes it 

challenging to plan for continuity of study. However, Chiswick School, our most popular destination, offers French within their language provision so many of our learners will continue to build on their French knowledge in Year 7. Where this isn’t the case, we are confident that the knowledge of language structures, along with the skills, attitudes and habits of language learning acquired as part of the Strand French curriculum will effectively pave the way for the future study of another foreign language.