At Colerne Church of England Primary School, we want all our children to develop a curiosity about and a deeper understanding of the world. We believe that the learning of a language provides a valuable educational, social and cultural experience for our children. It helps them to develop communication skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing, with an aim of making substantial progress in one language. In addition, children’s developing knowledge of how language works will lay the foundations for further language learning in future.

Our aims are to:

• Broaden children’s perspective on the world
• Encourage a greater understanding of their own cultures and those of others
• Enable the expression of ideas and thoughts in another language
• Develop the ability to understand and respond in speech and writing
• Provide opportunities for children to communicate for practical purposes
• Support new ways of thinking
• Offer opportunities to read great literature in the original language.

KS2 teachers use the Language Angels scheme of work for French, a live scheme which is continually updated and revised. The content is easily adapted to meet the needs of all our children, ensuring a consistent and dynamic programme of study. 

KS2 children are taught in weekly lessons delivered by class teachers though age-appropriate topics and themes, which allow French to become embedded in children's learning. Children will progressively acquire, use and apply a growing bank of vocabulary, language skills and grammatical knowledge, leading to more complex, fluent and authentic language. They will be taught how to listen and read longer pieces of text gradually in the foreign language and they will have many opportunities to speak, listen to, read and write the language being taught with and without scaffolds, frames and varying levels of support.  We acknowledge children’s different learning styles and our children learn through active participation in actions, rhymes, stories, song, grammar focus, video clips, sentence structure, dictionary work and many more creative ways to extend, embed and combine language skills.

Our languages curriculum is reinforced through enrichment opportunities provided by interaction with French native speakers, outreach by KS3 French teachers, projects with Language Ambassadors from Sheldon School and exposure to the range of languages spoken within our school and wider community. An introduction to specific francophone cultural festivals and traditions is woven throughout KS2 via the Language Angels scheme. Links are also made across the curriculum to global cultures and languages, comparing and contrasting with both our own and the French language.