MFL

Modern Foreign Language Curriculum Overview

This document details how we organise the skills, knowledge and vocabulary that is taught in MFL across the school in each year group.

MFL Curriculum Overview.pdf

Curriculum Intent

The intent is that all pupils will develop a genuine interest and positive curiosity about foreign languages, finding them enjoyable and stimulating. Learning a second/third language will also offer pupils the opportunity to explore relationships between language and identity, develop a deeper understanding of other cultures and the world around them with a better awareness of self, others and cultural differences. At Westmoor Primary School we hope our children work towards becoming life-long language learners.

Through our M.F.L. Curriculum, we aim to appreciate the diversity of language in our Modern World. We will teach all pupils to think critically, multi-task and improve their listening skills.

Through learning another language, we aim to enable all pupils to communicate in the wider world and broaden their horizons.

Curriculum Implementation

All classes will have access to very high-quality foreign language resources. At Westmoor Primary School we use the award-winning Language Angels scheme of work to supplement our curriculum. This will progressively develop pupil skills in foreign languages through regularly taught and well-planned weekly lessons in key stage 2.

Children will progressively acquire, use and apply a growing bank of vocabulary, language skills and grammatical knowledge organised around age-appropriate topics and themes - building blocks of language into more complex, fluent and authentic language.

In addition to MFL lessons, we also enhance the children’s language learning experience by the following:

Theme days where each class learns about a particular country e.g. language, culture, food, dress people.

Cookery sessions of traditional foods from the country of the language being studied.
Weather forecasts based on maps from the country of the language being studied.

Pupil learning and progression will be assessed at regular intervals in line with school policy. Teachers will aim to assess each language skill (speaking, listening, reading and writing) twice throughout each scholastic year to be able to provide reference points against which learning and progression in each skill can be demonstrated.

Curriculum Impact
As well as each subsequent lesson within a unit being progressive, the teaching type organisation of Language Angels units also directs, drives and guarantees progressive learning and challenge. Units increase in level of challenge, stretch and linguistic and grammatical complexity as pupils move from Early Learning units through Intermediate units and into the most challenging Progressive units. Units in each subsequent level of the teaching type categories require more knowledge and application of skills than the previous teaching type. Activities contain progressively more text (both in English and French) and lessons will have more content as the children become more confident and ambitious with the foreign language they are learning. We measure the impact of our curriculum through monitoring the three core strands - oracy, literacy and intercultural understanding.