Linguists at Queen's Crescent

 

Being a Linguist

 Lead Engineer: Miss Chiara Raicovi

 

Intent:

Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening into other cultures. A high-quality languages education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. The teaching should enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond both in speech and in writing. It should also provide opportunities for them to learn new ways of thinking. Language teaching should provide the foundation for learning further languages, equipping pupils to study and work in other countries.

The teaching should provide an appropriate balance of spoken and written language and should lay the foundation for further foreign language teaching at key stage three and enable children to understand and communicate ideas, facts and feelings in speech and writing, focused on familiar and routine matters, using their knowledge of phonology, grammatical structures and vocabulary.

 

Aims:

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

  • 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 through what they say, including through discussion and asking questions, and continuing 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.

 

How do we teach French and why has this approach been chosen?

French is taught from Year 3 upwards following the Language Angels scheme of work and resources. This will progressively develop pupils’ skills in foreign languages through regularly taught and well-planned weekly lessons in KS2. Children will progressively acquire, use and apply a growing bank of vocabulary, language skills and grammatical knowledge organised around age-appropriate themes – building blocks of language into more complex, fluent and authentic language.

Although mainly taught as a stand-alone lesson, units, where possible and appropriate, will be linked to class topics and cross curricular themes. Children will build on previous knowledge gradually as their foreign lessons continue to recycle, revise and consolidate previously learnt language whilst building on all four language skills: listening, speaking reading and writing. Knowledge and awareness of required and appropriate grammar concepts will be taught throughout all units at all levels of challenge.

Our modern foreign languages curriculum progression girds are used in order to ensure disciplinary and substantive knowledge build year on year. This ensures that by the end of year 6, pupils have the skills and knowledge to support their future studies.

What our design & technology lessons involve:

Re-cap prior knowledge

 These information recall activities may involve :

  • Class discussion
  • Mini quizzes
  • Vocabulary flashcards
  • Songs
New information presented in small and simple steps

 Children are then given time to practise applying the new knowledge, in an   effort to support working memory.

Teachers pose carefully considered  questions

 This allows pupils to deepen their understanding.

Clear modelling

 Teacher demonstrate a new concept or approach to learning.

Scaffolding

 Children’s activities are matched to their needs. The learning is broken up   into chunks and pupils are provided with the tools and structures needed to   be successful.

 

Children’s learning is documented in wider curriculum books.

 

Linguist outcomes:

Modern Foreign Languages is monitored by the Linguist lead throughout the year in the form of book looks, lesson observations and pupil conferencing. Classroom displays may also evidence the work the children have completed throughout a unit.

Teachers continually assess children during their French lessons and complete an assessment at the end of each unit. Progression grids act as a reference for end of year expectations for each year group and teachers are aware of the entry and exit points for their children.

The lead engineer works closely with the link governor to assess the impact of modern foreign languages curriculum each year.

 

Image result for PDF Being a Queen's Crescent Linguist Progression Document

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