Starting school in Autumn 2025? Contact us on 01530 222489 to book a tour.
Starting school in Autumn 2025? Contact us on 01530 222489 to book a tour.
Thringstone Primary School

French

At Thringstone Primary School, we aim to provide our children with a high-quality education in Modern Foreign Languages, which instils a love of language learning and an awareness of other cultures. We teach French as our MFL, however our wider curriculum offers children opportunities to experience a range of other languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. Our children are taught languages in a way that ensures progression of skills, and follows a sequence to build upon previous learning. It is our intention to ensure that by the end of our children’s primary education, they have acquired an understanding of both spoken and written French, confidence to speak in French with others and know how important other languages can be in their future.


How is it taught?

At Thringstone, we use Kapow to provide high-quality French lessons for our pupils. The scheme provides full National Curriculum coverage and supports teachers with expert CPD and content to aid the learning of our pupils. The French scheme of work is designed with three knowledge strands that run throughout our units with knowledge building cumulatively:

 ● Phonics
 ● Vocabulary
 ● Grammar
 

This knowledge can then be applied within our skills strands, which also run throughout each unit in the scheme:


 ● Language comprehension (Listening and reading)
 ● Language production (Speaking and writing)

Throughout, pupils are given opportunities to communicate for practical purposes around familiar subjects and routines. The scheme provides balanced opportunities for communication in both spoken and written French, although in Year 3 the focus is on developing oral skills, before incorporating written French in Year 4 and beyond. The 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.

Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work including role-play, language games and language detective work. Our scheme of work focuses on developing what we term ‘language detective skills’ and 
developing an understanding of French grammar, and key vocabulary rather than on committing to memory vast amounts of French vocabulary.  Pronunciation is emphasised early on using our Mouth mechanics videos to support pupils with phoneme pronunciation in French.