Intent
At Great Corby School and Nursery, we encourage each individual child to become a successful life-long learner by igniting their curiosity, developing their love for learning, and instilling a desire to achieve.
Our French scheme of work aims to instil a love of language learning alongside an awareness of other cultures. We want pupils to develop the confidence to communicate in French for practical purposes, using both written and spoken French. Through our Kapow scheme of work, we aim to give pupils a foundation for language learning that encourages and enables them to apply their skills to learning further languages, developing a strong understanding of the English language, facilitating future study, and opening up opportunities to study and work in other countries in the future.
Implementation
At Great Corby School and Nursery, French is taught to Key Stage 2 children on a weekly basis. To help pupils retain their French learning, teachers incorporate French into the classroom environment at every opportunity.
At Great Corby School and Nursery, we follow the Kapow French scheme of work which is designed with six strands that run throughout.
These are:
- Speaking and pronunciation
- Listening
- Reading and writing
- Grammar
- Intercultural understanding
- Language detective skills
Our French scheme allows pupils the opportunities to communicate for practical purposes around familiar subjects and routines. We provide a balanced opportunities for communication in both spoken and written French, although in Year 3 the focus is on developing oral skills, before incorporating more written French as they move through KS2.
The Kapow Primary scheme is a spiral curriculum, with key skills and vocabulary revisited repeatedly with increasing complexity, allowing pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Cross-curricular links are included throughout our French units, allowing children to make connections and apply their language skills to other areas of their learning.
Strong subject knowledge is vital for staff to be able to deliver a highly effective languages curriculum. Each unit of lessons includes multiple teacher videos to develop subject knowledge and support ongoing CPD.
Impact
The impact of the teaching of French is monitored continuously through both formative and summative assessment.
The expected impact of following the Kapow Primary French scheme of work is that children will:
- Be able to engage in purposeful dialogue in practical situations (e.g., ordering in a cafe, following directions) and express an opinion.
- Make increasingly accurate attempts to read unfamiliar words, phrases, and short texts.
- Speak and read aloud with confidence and accuracy in pronunciation.
- Demonstrate understanding of spoken language by listening and responding appropriately.
- Use a bilingual dictionary to support their language learning.
- Be able to identify word classes in a sentence and apply grammatical rules they have learnt.
- Have developed an awareness of cognates and near-cognates and be able to use them to tackle unfamiliar words in French, English, and other languages.
- Be able to construct short texts on familiar topics.
- Meet the end of Key Stage 2 stage expectations outlined in the national curriculum for Languages.
After the implementation of Kapow Primary French, pupils should leave school equipped with a range of language-learning skills to enable them to study French, or any other language, with confidence at Key Stage 3.
