Languages Curriculum

At St Mary’s, we believe that learning a foreign language is a necessary part of being a member of a multi-cultural society and provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality languages education should foster children’s curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. The teaching should enable children to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. It should also provide opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read great literature in the original language. Language teaching should provide the foundation for learning further languages, equipping children to study and work in other countries.

At St Mary’s. Pupils begin to study French in Years 3 and 4 in the Second half of the year (Spring 2 and Summer 1 and 2). They are taught by our specialist French teacher for 1 hour per week.  Skills and language acquisition is planned progressively and as the children move into Years 5 and 6 (taught in Autumn 1 and 2 and Spring 1) they become more confident in listening to, speaking and writing in French.  Our specialist teacher is employed by us from ‘Le club Francais’ and also offers after school Spanish via our language club. 

By the end of year six, we aim for our pupils to meet the expectations of the National Curriculum:

1. understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources
2. 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
3. can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt
4. discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.