Modern Foreign Languages

MFL Curriculum Intent

Learning a foreign language provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality language education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. Our aim at Eastchurch is to broaden pupils’ horizons and encourage them to step beyond familiar cultural boundaries and develop new ways of seeing the world. Quality first teaching will enable pupils 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 develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.

Pupils should develop a competency that is both broad and deep in the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing based on a sound foundation of core grammar, vocabulary and phonics. They should also be able to understand and communicate personal and factual information that goes beyond their immediate needs and interests, developing and justifying points of view in speech and writing, with increased spontaneity, independence and accuracy. Furthermore, critical learning, high frequency language and key communicative functions are revisited receptively and productively many times as we progress through the curriculum to support  

MFL Curriculum Implementation 

We aspire to expose our pupils in KS2 to a broad and ambitious Modern Languages curriculum, which is rich in skills and knowledge, develops self-efficacy, kindles curiosity and promotes diversity and tolerance of other cultures. Our Rigolo Languages curriculum will give pupils the opportunity to:

• use language skills, receptively and productively, for communication in the real world, for practical purposes, for their immediate needs, interests and beyond and to express and justify opinions;
• develop their confidence and autonomy to access new and unfamiliar language through the use of decoding skills brought about by the explicit teaching of phonics and sound patterns;
• work towards becoming a fluent and spontaneous speaker of a foreign language (French).

The units of Rigolo are organised around a theme, which helps the children to see how subjects are both ‘independent’ and interdependent’ enabling them to see ‘the big picture’ of their learning, make connections through and across different subjects and talk about a theme from multiple perspectives.