Crestwood Park Primary School

Our Foreign Languages Curriculum Vision

At Crestwood Park Primary we are passionate about providing our children with opportunities to develop an understanding of a new language., Through enjoyable, active and progressive experiences across Key Stage Two, our curriculum will enable children to make substantial progress in French by the end of Year 6.

As a school, we have chosen to adopt Gianfranco Conti’s EPI approach (Extensive Processing Implementation) to acquire a new language. Our curriculum is implemented through a variety of teaching approaches and tasks which encompass the four key skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing.

In order for our children to communicate with more confidence in French, we have focused upon teaching productive and accessible skills in a sentence building format to help alleviate the cognitive load on children as they practise learning their new language. This allows for all of our children, including those with special educational needs, to access the MFL curriculum in manageable chunks to ensure that every child can achieve their gems. Throughout the curriculum, there are frequent flashbacks and a variety of activities to revisit and apply vocabulary taught in each unit. This helps to ensure that children do not forget the language they acquire whilst also allowing for chances to use this vocabulary in conversational French that has been carefully modelled and scaffolded. This helps to embed the new learning deeper and ensures children retain this information throughout their language experience in key stage 2.

By working in cooperation with our secondary schools and their language specialists, we ensure our curriculum provides the depth of learning required for a seamless transition from Year 6 to Year 7 and above all, we ensure that our children begin KS3 feeling prepared, confident and ready to build upon their acquired knowledge of French.

Our Languages Curriculum Aims for our children are-

to understand that they are part of an international community

to be open-minded and curious about other languages and cultures

to know about the possibilities that learning another language offers in later life

to be able to speak in another language with good pronunciation and intonation

By working in cooperation with our secondary schools and their language specialists, we ensure our curriculum provides the depth of learning required for a seamless transition from Year 6 to Year 7 and above all, we ensure that our children begin KS3 feeling prepared, confident and ready to build on their firm foundations.

To support our teaching of Languages, we use Gianfranco Conti's Language Gym Books. These books provide activities and audio clips that support the development of building sentences in French. To explore this further, please see below.