Throckley Primary School
French – Intent, Implementation and Impact Intent
At Throckley Primary School, we know that the study of a modern foreign language enhances children’s literacy, self-confidence and broader cultural understanding. Our resolve to embed language learning within our school community is born of the statutory commitment in the National Curriculum to give every child between the ages of 7 and 11 the opportunity to learn a new language. With over 220 million native speakers internationally, French is the second most widely learnt language after English. The importance of outstanding modern foreign language provision is embodied in our curriculum drivers:
Understanding our place in the world
Given that 43% of the world’s population is bilingual, acquiring another language is a crucial asset in the global economy. With a worldwide French-speaking population of 700 million projected by 2050, bilingualism is an advantage in finding a job with multinational companies, in sectors ranging from retail and luxury goods to the automotive industry and aeronautics. Simultaneously, children gain a richer perspective of their own country and locality, making comparisons and contrasts.
Aspiring to achieve
Learning French provides a satisfying, enjoyable and intellectually challenging experience for children in coping with a different linguistic medium. The study of a language involves the practice of observational and study skills, and committing to memory useful material for subsequent recall: essential skills for higher education. Moreover, bilingual employees also experience boosts in jobs and pay, with many maintaining that language skills helped them to secure a job.
Broadening horizons
Thanks to the development of computing and the Internet, we can improve and deepen our connections with the world, celebrate languages and the diversity of cultures, and promote international and intercultural experiences. By lifting children above a pervasively American/English context, we ensure they can explore the lifestyle and culture of another land through the medium of its language.
The curriculum at Throckley aims to found progress throughout a child’s school career by developing a secure understanding of grammar, vocabulary and culture at the relevant stage. Insecure, superficial understanding prevents genuine progression: pupils may struggle at key stage transitions, amass damaging misconceptions, or have significant difficulties in understanding higher-order content.
Subject Aims
At Throckley, we follow the National Curriculum for languages, which aims to ensure that all pupils:
understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of sources;
speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation;
write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt;
discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.
Implementation
At Throckley, we follow the Primary French Project scheme of work and resources, which champions learning and teaching through the following imperatives:
ensure every child succeeds;
build on what the learners already know;
make learning vivid and real;
make learning an enjoyable and challenging experience;
do a lot with a little;
celebrate each learning outcome;
small steps lead to big changes.
There are two underlying principles underpinning the scheme of work:
children should enjoy their early years of learning French and to value the sights and sounds of France, the rhythm of the language and the real pleasure that can be gained from contact with the written word.
children should make real and measurable progress in their learning through innovative activities, challenging tasks and the desire to understand more and more as they listen to, speak and read French.
The Primary French Project (PFP) is precisely sequenced for maximum learning retention from Year 3 to Year 6 and beyond. “Progress in curricular terms means knowing more and remembering more, so a curriculum needs to carefully plan for that progress by considering the building blocks and sequence in each subject.” (Ofsted – 2021). Three key components are incorporated into the learning and activities of each lesson:
Oracy
Oracy (listening, speaking and spoken interaction about language) has an even more prominent place in language learning than in other subjects. All learners acquire language through exposure, enabling them to assimilate and re-use it. From an early age, children should be given regular and frequent opportunities to listen to the new language enabling them to identify and distinguish new sounds, reproduce and re-use them and make links between the sounds and written forms. The introduction of content is deliberate and considered, “using spaced or distributed practice, where knowledge is rehearsed for short periods over a longer period of time” and is thereby more effective (Rohrer & Taylor, 2006).
Literacy
Literacy (reading and writing) is supported by, and reinforces, the development of oracy. Whilst overwhelming if incorrectly implemented, the measured introduction of literacy skills as part of a rich learning environment, stimulates communication and understanding in speech and writing. In line with the findings of the Ofsted ReviewLanguages- 2021, the PFP reinforces the theory that “the building blocks of a language system are sounds, words and rules about how these connect to create sentences and meanings (phonics, vocabulary, grammar).” Texts are chosen to engage learners at a level appropriate to their stage of development and the vocabulary and grammar they have acquired at that stage.
Phonics
The teaching of phonics is an effective way of supporting children’s language learning. By explicitly teaching linked phonemes and graphemes to children via the Phonic Planets scheme, learners gain the tools of phonological decoding, allowing them to improve the pace and accuracy of their sight-reading of an unfamiliar text in the target language. Equally, the capacity of learners to retain new vocabulary is exponentially improved because they are able to make stronger sound-symbol connections when confronted with new words.
What will I see if I visit a French lesson in Throckley Primary School?
Evidence-informed lesson routines
Lesson routines at Throckley Primary School support staff in the implementation of Rosenshine’s principles of instruction. They ensure that what we know and understand about how best pupils learn, is then reflected in how we teach. The ‘teach – task – teach – task’ model allows ample time for misconceptions to be addressed. Lesson time is given to connecting to previous (and relevant) taught content; concise explanation; clear examples; time for practice before application; and challenge for all.
Credit: Alex Bedford ‘Pupil Book Study Handbook’
Creative, dynamic and passionate teachers: individual teachers decide upon those activities and tasks that will best engage children and secure learning. The Primary French Project lesson plans, slides and resources contain a wealth of ideas to pursue, with teacher notes attached to all slides to develop subject knowledge.
Clear, detailed explanations and modelling: teaching is explicitly clear and tailored to individual need. Children repeat, rehearse and revisit language orally and in written form according to teacher modelling. The Primary French Project and Phonic Planets schemes provide resources to support non-French speaking staff with accurate pronunciation and ensure they secure key subject knowledge. Support is layered: teachers’ keen understanding of assessment allows them to know each child as an individual and know when the time is right to remove support, guiding the child to independence at the pace that is right for them.
Quality talk: classroom talk is explicitly taught and age-appropriate prompts in the classroom support children in dialogic talk by scaffolding and extending responses. Talk ‘norms’ are embedded with differentiated sentence stems displayed which support children in reciprocal talk. Children are taught talk moves, including how to agree, disagree, support, challenge, clarify and summarise
Skilful teacher questioning: a commitment to staff training in this area has led to a teaching team that is skilled in using questioning to support learners in reaching their potential. A mix of strategies allow class teachers to direct questions to individuals where necessary, or use a ‘no hands up approach’ to allow children to contribute freely. To stretch children to the appropriate cognitive level, class teachers use prompts and cues to extend thinking. To develop this further, teachers probe for reasoning and clarification, and, as pupils move further up the school, they are taught to give full, detailed and reasoned responses.
Spaced retrieval of key learning: teachers employ a range of strategies (embedded across school), which support children in the recall and retention of key knowledge. These are drawn upon during low-stakes assessments and prior to the teaching of new, related content and are exactly indicated on resources.
Clear learning intentions and tasks, which are appropriately challenging: all lessons have a clear vocabulary, grammar or cultural knowledge focus shared with the children as a joint learning enterprise. That new learning is thoroughly rehearsed as both the objective and the means to its completion. Prior knowledge (in common with all language learning) is therefore revisited and utilised constantly. Children remember key knowledge, but also develop a full understanding of it in order to then apply this in context, creating authentic outcomes (written and spoken) which draw on their learning experience over time.
Authentic experience
All activities within and without school are fundamentally learning experiences chosen for the knowledge they secure in children. The “wonder” of the experience is in the learning and not the novelty of the event’; thus, French Weeks, European Day of Languages & the North East Festival of Languages are carefully planned to support our driver of ‘Broadening Horizons’, with organic activities and sharing with our partner school in Nancy-Metz affords children a platform for the authentic use of language, alongside greater opportunity for independent pupil generated language.
Resilient, independent learners
Children are taught metacognitive strategies, including how to plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning. Shared success criteria allow children to have ownership of their learning and support them to be able to monitor their progress.
Shared and verbalised class teacher thinking also models the thinking process for children and this is evident across school.
Our Wonderful Learners (OWLs) have been created to support children’s metacognitive development. Our OWLs encapsulate six learning behaviours, which we believe are integral to success both in school and beyond Classroom scaffolds and displays allow children to see what each behaviour looks like in practice.
As children move up the school, they are taught to independently identify the learning behaviour needed for a given task. OWLs support children’s self-regulation and also provide scaffolds for group and paired work. Moreover, the classroom zones of regulation to support children’s SEMH are translated into French in Key Stage 2, further supporting expression of feeling and independence.
Beautiful Work
Driven by our value of ‘pride’, we teach children the importance of well-presented, carefully planned work. Children are proud to display their outcomes; resilience, effort and progress are praised. Displays across school celebrate this success for the whole school community: children, families, practitioners and other stakeholders.
Impact
The success of French teaching at Throckley Primary School can be measured in the delight children take in expressing themselves in another language. By fostering love for a place and culture beyond their immediate community serves to drive our belief in broadening the horizons of the children at Throckley. Our MFL curriculum ensures that children develop their knowledge of where different languages, including the range of home languages spoken by the families of the school, are spoken in the world.
A mixture of formative and summative assessment is employed to ensure progress throughout the Key Stage. The children are given regular opportunities throughout the year to showcase their learning in written form. The Seesaw app on iPads is used regularly to evidence progress and learning in French oracy. Child (self and peer) assessment is increasingly encouraged within lessons. Progress and outcomes are decided upon using a combination of summative assessments, formative evaluation and evidence over time in children’s books.
Children’s progress against statutory substantive and disciplinary knowledge objectives is closely tracked by teachers using SIMs assessment grids. Crucially, pupil-book study, founded on the delicately structured evocation of the children’s learning in their own terms, forms the lynchpin of monitoring science learning from EYFS to Year 6. This ensures that the subject leader is confident of the success of the curriculum through the lens of those for whom it must be crafted.
The rich learning experiences in and out of class, guarantee that languages are celebrated, and multiculturalism is championed throughout the school community whilst providing a context for language learning and developing the children’s understanding of different cultures. Language is not only the mechanism of their learning but the key to their ambition and a conduit to their future.
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