CURRICULUM – MODERN FOREIGN LANGUAGE

‘A different language is a different vision of life.’
Frederico Fellini

‘To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world.’
Chinese proverb

Here at Camp, we teach French because we believe that it gives our children a stepping stone into a future of lifelong language learning and appreciation. We want our French curriculum to spark curiosity and for our children to foster a love of language learning that will carry them through not only their future studies, but all the adventures that life has to offer.  Language learning offers numerous benefits and opens so many doors – it extends mental development and encourages a greater world perspective.  Most importantly, it allows our children to  live in a less insular world. 

As one of our closest neighbours, and with an estimated 275 million speakers worldwide, we have chosen French as our Modern Foreign Language.   By choosing one language, we are able to delve deeper and progress our children further. 

We use a curriculum resource called Language Angels, although we adapt these units to suit our children, and in doing so create bespoke lessons.  We have organised our french units so that cross-curricular links are made in class where appropriate – this helps to embed key vocabulary and concepts across subjects, for example in Year 3 the french topic ‘L’ancienne Histoire de la Grande Bretagne’ links nicely to the Year 3 Stone Age topic.   

Our curriculum is structured around the 5 keys strands of language learning – speaking, listening, reading, writing and grammar.  These areas are taught within each unit, and skills are progressive throughout  KS2.  We strongly believe that if a child enjoys learning a language, they will continue to learn one – which is why we play games and sometimes sing songs in lessons and throughout the week; we want lessons to be engaging and fun, and a positive experience. 

We also know that a language is more than just words – it’s a reflection of a culture, a history, a place and its people and so much more, which is why we aim to teach these things as well, and when we can, we encourage our children to immerse themselves in french culture and tradition – for example, by having french cafe days.   There are many languages spoken within our Camp Community and we would love to celebrate all of these in a similar way as well, when time allows.