Feniscowles Primary School has created a curriculum intent statement.  This intent has been written to provide an overarching context for our school curriculum to allow  ‘A Feniscowles Child’  to  ‘Live Life in its fullest’.    This document can be found on our website and should be read in conjunction with our subject specific intent statements.  

How does Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) contribute to the overall curriculum intent?

At Feniscowles we believe that the study of a foreign language is a necessary part of being a member of a multi-cultural society and provides an opening to other cultures. We believe that learning a foreign language provides an opening to other cultures, fosters pupils’ curiosity and deepens their understanding of the world. It should enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and provide a foundation for learning other languages.  

It should also provide opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read great literature in the original language. Language teaching should provide the foundation for learning further languages, equipping children to study and work in other countries. 

The national curriculum for languages aims to ensure that all pupils: 

• understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources;
• speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation; 
• can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt; 
• discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied. 

At Feniscowles we base our teaching on The National Curriculum and we use the ‘Culturetheque’ online resources from the Primary French Project for planning and teaching lessons. We have a range of additional resources from the Catherine Cheater Scheme of Work to supplement and enhance learning and a large selection of French Storybooks, Rhymes, Songs and Non-Fiction books. 

• We aim to encourage the children to have an active engagement in the foreign language. 

• We try to make lessons as entertaining and enjoyable as possible to develop a positive attitude to language learning. 

• We aim to build children’s confidence through praise, doing a lot with a little language, celebrating each learning outcome, and letting the children know that small steps can lead to big changes. 

• We use a multi-sensory and kinaesthetic approach to teaching, building in physical responses to reinforce memory. 

Our MFL policy provides further details on how we implement this intent through our curriculum.