Languages
Languages at Ladybridge Primary School
The needs and backgrounds of our children, and the school’s core values, underpin all areas of our curriculum.
Intent
At Ladybridge, the intention of our languages curriculum is to develop an interest in and thirst for learning other languages. In Key Stage 2, we aim to introduce the learning of the French language and the understanding of its culture in enjoyable and stimulating ways. We hope to embed the essential skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing. We aim to build the children’s ‘culture capital’ so that they are aware of similarities and differences between cultures, encouraging tolerance and acceptance of others. In short, we hope to lay the foundations for future language learning. For many of our children this is a challenging subject, our resilience equips children with the necessary skills to aim high for success.
Implementation
Our languages curriculum has been designed to progressively develop skills in French. We have developed a curriculum progression document, to ensure that children acquire a bank of vocabulary which is organised around topics, as well as key verbs they will need to communicate with others using the language. They ensure development is progressive as they build on previous knowledge from units already studied. All children in KS2 are taught French in a weekly discreet lesson. This is delivered by the class teacher. KS1 children are introduced to languages through exploring other languages informally when studying other countries. We are also focusing on languages outside of the classroom. Signs around the school will also be displayed, in French and also home languages, to make language learning more meaningful and give it a purpose. EAL boards will be displayed in classrooms for those children who are new to the country. The teaching of new vocabulary and oracy skills are at the heart of our curriculum and we deliberately build in opportunities for talk, repetition and practice to ensure that depth of knowledge is secure through a range of Kagan techinques.
Impact
We have developed an assessment tool to track children’s development across all subjects in the curriculum, and subject leaders use these to track progress, identify gaps and celebrate successes in their subject area. Children use success criteria each lesson to self-assess how confident they are to apply their learning independently or with support.