Modern Foreign Languages (MfL) at Eastway
At Eastway, we teach French as our modern foreign langauge as this is the only language that is taught in all the local secondary schools. This means your child will have a strong start to their language development in secondary school.
MfL Intent
At Eastway, we aim for our MfL curriculum to be:
- Well Designed and Delivered, fulfilling the requirements of the National Curriculum. We lay the foundations needed for successful learning through the robust delivery of our Easter Matters Early Years Curriculum which is tailored to pupil's needs
- Knowledge-Rich so that children build deep knowledge in French that they return to and build upon as they move through school
- Closing the Gap: we carefully check children have the prior learning they need to be successful in a lesson and take action to support them fill any gaps they may have. We also check how well they are acquiring new knowledge in the lesson to adapt the lesson to their needs and provide additional support or challenge for children who need so that all children achieve our ambitious learning focus.
- Bring Learning to Life as children have real-life experiences of modern foreign languages in their world
- Develop children as active, independent learners who are Ready, Respectful, Responsible
- Love learning French!
MfL Implementation at Eastway
We have chosen to teach French at Eastway as this is the only language that all our feeder secondary school teach so it gives your child a good start to their KS3 language learning.
To achieve the aims set out in our intent, we have carefully mapped out exactly what children learn in each year group, the summary of this is shown below:
More importantly, we have mapped out exactly what knowledge will be covered in each year group so that children can recall what they have already learned and build upon it. This helps your child change their long term memory of key ideas in geography as ideas are regularly returned to and deepened.
Our progression of knowledge maps children's learning from Y3 to KS3 so that we can be confident we are preparing your child well for the knowledge they will need when they go to secondary school.
When learning a language, developing vocabulary is really important knowledge to gain. We have planned out when children will be taught new words and phrases in French and when we will return to them in future units of work.
French is taught in Years 3-6, using Primary Languages Network scheme of work which provides quality learning resources for your child.
Our Year 3 & 4 children focus on speaking and listening to French, Our Y5 & Y6 children focus on reading and writing in French
In Eastway French lessons you may see:
- Plenty of repetition of new language to support memorising
- Chances to recognise language before being expected to produce it independently
- Children engaging with and using the target language
- Struggling learners supported with extra opportunities to practice areas of difficulty (e.g. extra time on repetition before moving on to using new language, scaffolds for written activities, etc.)
- Additional challenge available for children who are ready to work at a greater depth than the ARE lesson (e.g. encourage to look up supplementary vocabulary using wordreference.com, make links to prior areas of learning, etc.)
- Adults giving feedback as children work and children responding in green pen.
MfL Impact
To check your child has learned what we have intended them to, we set short tasks within lessons to see how much your child has understood and adapt our lessons from their to meet their needs. We use knowledge checkers with key facts for each lesson to help focus children's minds on the important parts of the lesson and to assess whether they have understood these.
To get a picture of what your child is retaining over time, we use the prior learning checks at the beginning of each lesson, complete quizzes at the end of each week, look at the work they have completed in their books and complete end of unit impact summaries. These reviews of learning are completed by their class teacher, our MfL lead and our SLT
We will let you know how your child is getting on in MfL in their end of year report and will give you opportunities to see their work in books throughout the year. If you would like any further information, please contact your child's class teacher or contact the school office.
