Modern Foreign Languages

Intent, Implementation and Impact Statement for MFL

At St Mary’s CofE Primary we focus on French as our core language offer. We want children to develop a curiosity and understanding of other languages and cultures to help to prepare them to be a global citizen – ready to take on the challenge of learning other languages in the future and visiting other countries. We want children to appreciate the cultural capital of other countries and to begin to communicate and express their ideas in French

Our MFL curriculum reflects our five school values.

Implementation

Although MFL is not part of the KS1 curriculum science. Children are given opportunities to listen, sing and watch a variety of material from different countries and to develop an awareness of different countries and cultures. MFL is taught discretely in Years 3 to 6 during a French lesson every two weeks.

We use plans developed by a MFL specialist teacher from a school within our MAT. The plans are separated into on-going learning which can be developed throughout the week with the class, such as greetings and a lesson that has a context. Separating the on-going language from the contexts allows the focus in regular language lessons to be on developing language learning skills and fundamental grammatical understanding. Repeating key structures and grammar across years enables these fundamental skills to become fully embedded over a period of time. Children are taught how to build sentences from the word go and become confident in their ability to manipulate the language. Teaching independent dictionary skills enables learners to expand their own vocabularies.

MFL lessons will provide opportunities for children to learn in a variety of ways, including collaboratively and practically.

We work with our neighboring high school and with other linguists from the community to run extra-curricular language clubs such as our Japanese Club and our German Club. We also make opportunities to perform poems or songs in other languages during our termly celebration events in church.

Impact

The impact of our MFL curriculum can be seen by talking to the children about their interest in this subject and seeing evidence in their files, on learning walls in classrooms and on displays around the school. We also make opportunities to perform poems or songs in other languages during our termly celebration events in church.

Teachers use formative assessment methods to identify children’s understanding such as speaking and listening tasks; writing tasks and discussion. Children’s attainment is updated on Target Tracker throughout the year and attainment steps are updated termly. This allows the class teacher and subject lead to monitor the progress of all children across the school.

MFL is monitored by the subject leader each term and the outcomes inform action planning and the SDP.  The MFL Leader meets with other MFL subject leaders from the MAT each term.