Mrs Mansfield is the subject leader for MFL

At Northmead we believe that children should see themselves as part of a worldwide community and beginning to learn a foreign language provides an opening to other cultures. Learning a language should foster their curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world.

The Modern Foreign Language taught at Northmead is French. The children have a regular thirty to forty minutes lesson of modern foreign language a week, in order to encourage progression and skills development as well as other opportunities throughout the week to practise what they have learnt. This may include answering the register in French and responding to the day’s date in French.

Learning French begins in Year 3.                                                                               

During French lessons, children are given the opportunity to work as a class, as individuals and as part of a group. They begin by learning vocabulary based on a theme such as animals, colours, the body or buying an ice cream and are then given the opportunity to use this vocabulary in short sentences. We feel it is important  for children at all levels to be able to learn simple sentence structure that can be used with different topics. As the children progress, they are encouraged to extend sentences and also to use dictionaries to add to their vocabulary.

When asked, the children told us that they love playing games in French and so we have introduced a wide variety of these. They also told us how much they enjoy songs. Each year group has a chance to learn songs based on their French topic and these are very popular.

A French café in year 6 and a new range of French story books including La Chenille qui Fait des Trous ( The Very Hungry Caterpillar) give our children a chance to see and hear French in real life situations. We aim to send each child to Secondary school with an enthusiasm to take this subject further.

Essayez plus, apprenez plus, réalisez plus!