Modern Foreign Languages

French at Horton St Michael’s

Here at Horton St Michael’s, we aim for our children to develop an interest and thirst for learning another language, this comes from our Christian vision and our value of curiosity about the world that God has created. It incorporates our value of love as by learning the language that another person speaks we are practically showing our interest in their life and culture.

In KS1 French is taught in small chunks through the week.  The  register is taken in French, allowing the practice of greetings and expression of health, classroom commands are given in French to stand up, sit down, wash hands, line up, listen and so forth.  We learn the parts of the body through song and dance and we use finger rhymes to reinforce what we learn in a fun way.  We play Simon says in French, the class teacher reads children’s books in French, often using French translations of books the children know in English like the Little Princess books by Tony Ross, we sing Comptines ( nursery rhymes) and we learn the numbers to 20 through fun songs and videos. 

By the end of lower Key Stage 2, we want our children to have:

• A positive start to language learning
• Fun through engaging and relevant topics
• A focus on speaking and listening activities with supportive reading and writing where appropriate
• An acquisition of key and everyday vocabulary and language to support future learning
• A model which re-visits and repeats key skills and vocabulary, considering the nature of a rolling programme. For example, Year 4’s will start the year with knowledge from the previous, whereas Year 3’s will begin with no previous knowledge.
• Skills and progression are built into planning using Year 3 and 4 targets