Modern Foreign Languages (MFL)
St Edward’s Values: Thankfulness, Forgiveness, Compassion, Perseverance, Courage, Friendship
‘I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.’ (John 10:10)
Modern Foreign Languages Curriculum at St Edward’s
Intent
Why?
At St Edwards we recognise that learning a foreign language can provide an opening to other cultures and deepens pupil’s understanding of the world around them. We believe that high-quality foreign language education should foster pupils’ curiosity and immerse them in a variety of cultures and practises. Teaching should enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and allow them to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and writing. It should also provide opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes. Pupils should be encouraged to learn new ways of thinking and to read literature in the original language. Through effective teaching we feel that the study of a language can enable of pupils to study and work in other countries in their future years.
Coverage
We deliver the 4 aims of the National Curriculum (to understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources/to speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity/ to write at varying lengths, for different purposes and audiences/ to discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied) via a scheme called Speekee.
The progression of National Curriculum objectives is detailed in the Modern Foreign Languages Curriculum Roadmap attached.
For each Speekee topic
Barriers faced by our children
We have identified some core barriers that the children of our school face when they are accessing the curriculum, and we intend to deliver the Modern Foreign Languages curriculum with an approach that addresses these:
- Poor vocabulary – we ensure that our topics are planned with careful and deliberate vocabulary progression. See the attached vocabulary progression document.
- Poor communication and team-work skills –
- Poor resilience – we design challenging tasks in our geography curriculum, allowing children to experience failure and errors in a safe environment, scaffolded by the implementation of growth mindset training.