In a diverse, multi-cultural society it is more important than ever that people are able to understand other languages and cultures. At Birch Hill our chosen language is French.

Through learning a language children receive the opportunity to develop respect an appreciation for other languages and cultures, helping them in a world where this is becoming crucial to both personal development and in a global society.

National Curriculum Aims

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

• 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.

Delivery

At Birch Hill we use the Language Angels Scheme of Work which provides a structured approach to ensure children build on their skills as they progress through Key Stage 2.  

The aim of Language Angels’ Curriculum is:  

to develop the confidence and competence of each child in the foreign language they are learning. Our goal is for them to be passionate, curious and confident about their own foreign language learning abilities when they finish the primary school phase of their education.  

We will help them develop and demonstrate substantial progress in the 5 key language skills necessary for learning French.  

• Speaking 
• Listening 
• Reading 
• Writing 
• Grammar 

We aim to ensure that pupils of all abilities develop solid foundations in these key language learning skills - properly preparing them for the next stage of their language learning journey. These skills will develop children’s ability to understand what they hear and read and enable them to express themselves in speech and writing. We will extend their knowledge of how language works and explore the similarities and differences between the foreign language they are learning and English. We will also help strengthen their sense of identity through learning about culture in other countries and comparing it with their own.