Modern Foreign Languages at Bedfield
At Bedfield C of E Primary School we teach children to start and develop their ability to speak, read and write French under our Three Big Ideas – Culture, Understanding and Fluency. The children are taught to appreciate some cultural aspects of living in France as a child, in a family and in the context of pursuing leisure activities, rooted in some locational understanding of place and in contrast to comparative aspects of life in Britain.
Our teaching scheme has been written by T Davies from our MAT on a four- year rolling programme which is contemporary and fit for purpose. All children regularly rehearse French words for weather, numbers, days of the week, seasons, months and weather, whilst they progress into learning vocabulary in the context of short, longer and more complex sentences. Grammatical structures of the French language are progressively built across year groups in stages, moving on when children have secured a particular stage and are ready to apply their understanding to speaking, reading and writing in French on particular themes. In this way, opportunities for repetition gradually build understanding of the structure and sound of a language new to the majority of our pupils. Our intention is to make the learning of a new language fun whilst at the same time appreciating some cultural aspects of another country and growing understanding of the wider world.