French is the predominant language taught throughout the years here at Bealings, with a specialist teacher visiting each class from Years 1 to 6. A progression of skills is seen across the year groups with spoken communication being the key focus, moving towards reaching and writing as the children have more experience.
Above all, we want our children to feel confident to have a go and so aim to provide them with as many opportunities as possible to see the language they are learning in a realistic context. For example, we have recently turned our school cafe into a French one, once a week, where staff and children are encouraged to communicate in French.
The fictional contexts within which we work also provide opportunities to learn languages. For example, whilst working as a roller coaster design company sent to work in Mexico, the children swapped their French lessons for Spanish, and whilst being a transportation company commissioned to transport an important historical object from Copenhagen to England, we explored Danish in order to learn some basic phrases.
With different languages represented by our children, we use our friends to teach us useful words and phrases. For example, two of our French speaking Reception children have become the teachers of French in their class. In the past this has been true of other languages, including Spanish, German and even Russian.
Modern foreign languages are living and we want the children to experience them this way; not as words on a book or once a week in a French lesson, but for communication, collaboration and our world community.