French
At Cleves, the French curriculum has been designed with the aim of providing children with the basic vocabulary to converse confidently in French on a range of topics relevant to their age and interests so that they can understand and be understood by French people. We also aim to teach our children about other cultures in order to compare them with our own.
We believe that the best way to get children involved in learning a language is to make it fun, and to cater for different learning styles. The majority of each lesson is speaking and listening based - a variety of games and songs are used to make the lessons interactive and to help the children learn the vocabulary or concepts concerned - with reading and writing activities generally in the last third of the lesson to practise and consolidate new vocabulary.
We use a software package called ‘Rigolo’, which includes cartoon and video presentations and a native French speaker to introduce new vocabulary. In addition to this, a wide range of other resources are used to complement and enrich the National Curriculum approved scheme of work that Rigolo provides.
Year 3 covers the basic topics needed when starting a new language: introductions and personal information, numbers, dates, foods, parts of the body, family and pets. In Year 4, we continue to expand on personal descriptions, learn about giving directions, French festivals, shopping for food and describing the weather. In Year 5, we look at more complex descriptions, use the negative and future tense, while covering the topics of school, holidays, homes and towns. Finally in Year 6, we learn about hobbies, clothing, daily routines, transport and cafes, while covering more complex grammatical points, such as the past tense and the use of conjunctions in writing. We also offer a taster lesson of German and Spanish at the end of Year 6, to give the children a flavour of other languages they may learn at secondary school.
To read more about the intent, implementation and impact of our curriculum at Cleves, please click the link below.