Leading French (Autumn 25/26)
This online session is designed for teachers, subject leaders and curriculum leaders to look closely at primary French and find out how we can implement a well-sequenced, coherent French curriculum. This session will guide discussions about the rationale for the French curriculum and it will include the three essential pillars of learning a foreign language; phonics, vocabulary and grammar.
Participants will reflect upon curriculum planning in French and how our content-based choices can help children to become excited about learning a new language and how they can use their knowledge of English, Latin etymology and home languages to support their understanding of French. Importantly, we will discuss how excellent language teaching should provide the foundation for learning further languages, equipping children to study and work in other countries.
We will consider questions such as:
- What do we teach in French and why?
- How can we sequence the French curriculum to ensure children are making progress from lesson to lesson, unit to unit and year to year?
- How can we develop children’s knowledge of French phonics so that they pronounce new words accurately?
- What can we do to ensure that the knowledge we teach ‘sticks’?
- What can we do to help develop children’s memorisation skills in French?
- How can we support children to speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions?
- How can we support children to write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt?
- How can we effectively assess in French and review the impact of our French curriculum?
This course is for curriculum leaders, French subject leaders and teachers and will reflect upon the role that French plays in the new Ofsted inspection framework.
The session will be recorded, and videos will be made available for participants.