Alston Lane Catholic Primary School & Nursery

Languages Curriculum Statement

Intent

At Alston Lane Catholic Primary School, we believe that learning a foreign language provides openings to other cultures which will help foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. At Alston Lane, the children are taught about the French culture and language so that they can make substantial progress in one language. It is our intention to ensure that by the end of our children’s primary education, they have acquired: an understanding of both spoken and written language, gained confidence to speak in French with others and know how important fluency in other languages can be in their future.

Implementation

Our Languages curriculum has been designed to develop not only the children’s language skills, but also their love of learning a language. It progressively develops language skills, through regularly taught lessons which allow children to acquire new language and then use and apply it in a range of different scenarios and topics. Our French lessons are interactive, and pupils are encouraged and supported to develop their speaking and listening sills through conversational work, singing activities and games. As their confidence and skill grows, children learn to record their work through pictures, captions and sentences. All children in KS2 have weekly French lessons and we currently use ‘Primary Languages Network’ to support our teaching of French. The Primary Languages Network scheme is progressive and builds on the language skills and knowledge the children learn year by year. Topics are repeated in different year groups and children spend valuable time consolidating prior learning. Core tasks and assessment pieces are built into the Primary Languages Network Scheme and teachers are skilled at monitoring children’s progress and attainment in French. Our languages curriculum is reinforced by our residential trip to France for Year 6 pupils. During this trip, children can put into practice their language learning in real life contexts and develop a wider cultural appreciation of the language they are studying. We believe this acts as a great motivation for language learning and develops historical and intercultural understanding.