At Belleville, our pupils learn French with a specialist teacher from Year 3 to Year 6 for an hour each week.  Our MFL provision is based on our LEARN statement, which underpins our whole curriculum.  Through interactive, engaging and relevant topics, pupils learn to understand and communicate, orally and in writing, in French.  Using practical activities, they develop and extend their ability to express their thoughts and ideas in another language, thereby fostering their curiosity and deepening their understanding of other peoples and cultures.    

Our MFL provision is planned to support and complement our local community, which has a significant French speaking population (around 10%).  French-speaking pupils are fully involved in our learning and are challenged through extension tasks and supporting their peers. Furthermore, beyond the school day, many children participate in extra-curricular ‘French between the Commons’ sessions at the school, which follow the national French curriculum.

Our curriculum enables the children to develop the four key language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.  Our progression map is below. Most activities use a combination of one or more skill, as this is how language is used in the real world. Grammar is mostly taught implicitly through recognising patterns, rather than as separate lesson topics.

Our MFL pedagogy focuses predominantly on target language use by teacher and students, immersing students in French by adding and developing increasing layers of complexity each time they revisit a similar theme. We teach using a wide range of interactive activities including routines, miming, music, singing, games, role-play and stories in order to meet and extend the language levels of individual pupils, developing confidence through enjoyment being key to our pupils' success.

Please see our MFL intention statement below and our curriculum coverage.

Download our French Progression Document