French Overview

At Burnside Primary School, we believe that learning a modern foreign language opens a window to the world, boosts literacy skills, and builds lifelong self-confidence. Our French curriculum ensures every child in Key Stage 2 (Years 3–6) develops the tools to communicate in a new language while growing a broader understanding of diverse cultures, helping them to thrive, achieve, and belong.

Our language curriculum directly reflects our school motto:

• Be Safe: We foster a warm, supportive classroom environment where pupils feel safe to take risks, try out new sounds, and make mistakes as they practice their spoken French.

• Be Smart: Pupils actively develop their observational, listening, and memory skills. Through the explicit teaching of French phonics, grammar, and vocabulary, children learn to decode unfamiliar words, build accurate pronunciation, and understand sentence structures.

• Be Kind: Language study naturally encourages empathy and respect. By learning about French-speaking communities across the globe, pupils appreciate cultural differences, celebrate diversity, and listen respectfully to one another during partner and group work.

National Curriculum Aims

In line with the National Curriculum for languages, our French provision at Burnside Primary aims to ensure that all Key Stage 2 pupils:

• Listen and Respond: Understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources.

• Speak with Confidence: Speak with increasing fluency and spontaneity, finding ways to express their ideas through conversation, asking questions, and continually refining their pronunciation and intonation.

• Write for Purpose: Write at varying lengths for different purposes and audiences, applying a growing range of grammatical structures.

• Appreciate Literature: Discover and develop an appreciation for stories, songs, poems, and written texts in French.

Our Approach & Curriculum Delivery

At Burnside Primary, we follow the Cave Languages scheme of work, which provides a carefully sequenced, step-by-step pathway from Year 3 to Year 6. This structured approach ensures clear progression in the key strands of language learning: Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, and Grammar, alongside dedicated Phonics instruction.

Key highlights of our French implementation include:

• Explicit Phonics Instruction: Following the Cave Languages phonics progression, pupils are taught key French sound-spelling patterns (phonemes and graphemes) from Year 3 onwards. This gives them the decoding tools needed to read unfamiliar texts accurately and pronounce new words with confidence.

• Progressive Skill Building: Small, manageable steps ensure children make measurable progress year-on-year—moving from single words and short phrases in Lower Key Stage 2 to complex sentences, conversational dialogues, and short written paragraphs in Upper Key Stage 2.

• Vivid & Interactive Learning: Lessons incorporate songs, rhymes, games, visual prompts, and authentic listening materials to make language learning memorable, engaging, and enjoyable.

• Cultural Discovery: Beyond vocabulary and grammar, pupils explore the customs, traditions, and geography of France and French-speaking countries worldwide, widening their perspectives and helping them feel part of a global community.