Modern Foreign Languages at Thaxted Primary School

At Thaxted Primary School, across Key Stage 2, we nurture and promote a joyful enthusiasm for learning a Modern Foreign Language, and our French lessons are engaging, relevant and fun.  Our children are encouraged to fully embrace the cultural and linguistic aspects of the language through a variety of speaking, listening, singing, reading and writing activities, and in doing so develop a skill for life that will liberate them from insularity and promote a balanced perspective on our own language and the country’s position in the world.

From Year 3 up, children take part in weekly French lessons taught using a visually engaging and structured scheme of learning: using a bespoke scheme from Language Angels. Exercise books provide a record of learning and vocabulary that children take up with them each year, to refer back to previous topics and so revisit and reinforce keywords and phrases.

Through the learning of a Modern Foreign Language, pupils demonstrate our school values of ‘The 6 R’s’ through the RESPECT they show and the RESPONSIBILITY they take for learning new vocabulary.  Practising pronunciation and having the confidence to converse takes RESILIENCE and RESOURCEFULNESS, and we encourage them to develop skills in REASONING as they draw comparisons and make links with our own culture and language.  Time for REFLECTION underpins everything we do, focusing on what we have learned, and how we can be even better linguists.

At the end of Year 6, we want our children to leave us empowered to communicate in another language, express their ideas and thoughts, understand and respond to other speakers, both in speech and in writing, and in doing so dovetail into the Key Stage 3 curriculum.  Our aim is that our language teaching provides the foundation for learning further languages, equipping pupils to work and study in other countries.  It is a skill for life, one which will open doors and take them as far as they wish to go!

Together, Learning for Life because the dreams of today are the future of tomorrow.