MFL
MFL at St Mary Magdalen’s
As set out in the Curriculum a high-quality language education should encourage children’s
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 to its
Speakers, both in speech and in writing. It should also provide opportunities for them to
Communicate for practical purposes and learn new ways of thinking. Language teaching
Should provide the foundation for learning further languages, equipping pupils to study and
Work in other countries.
Curriculum Aims
In teaching Modern Foreign Languages we aim:
To foster enjoyment and enrich the children’s experience.
To develop the children’s language learning skills and foster a positive attitude to
language learning.
To understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of sources.
To 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.
To begin to write at varying lengths, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt.
To discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.
To increase the children’s cultural awareness.
To lay the foundations for further study in KS3 and beyond.
To satisfy local and government requirements and follow the National Curriculum.
The staff and governors at St Mary Magdalen’s believe that pupils learn more effectively if they are enjoying what they are doing. ICT is used across the school to motivate pupils and to
support teachers with model pronunciation.
At St Mary Magdalen’s we aim to:
- Provide a rich and varied input of the language, so that children hear and interact
- with the sounds and patterns of the new language(ICT, native speakers)
- Encourage children to listen attentively and show understanding by responding.
- Use active learning to engage and motivate.
- Use games, stories, poems and songs to maximise enjoyment.
- Begin to speak in sentences, using familiar vocabulary.
- Develop an understanding of grammar and some key features of the language.
- Embed languages in class routines and school life
- Integrate language learning across the curriculum .
Planning for MFL
Languages are currently taught to all Key Stage 2 classes with all year groups learning Spanish. Teaching is largely made up of discrete language lessons, with additional teaching through daily integration of the Spanish in classroom routines(register).
The scheme (Tu y Yo) has been introduced to form the basic medium term
plans. This ensures a progression of skills. The children are taught how to:
- ask and answer questions;
- sing songs; read stories and poems
- use correct pronunciation and grammar;
- memorise words;
- interpret meaning;
- understand basic grammar;
- make use of bi-lingual dictionaries;
- work in pairs and groups and communicate in a foreign language;
- explore things from another’s perspective, giving insight into the people, lives and traditions of other cultures.
- ICT is widely used to support the children’s learning.