At Lady Margaret Primary School, we believe that learning a modern foreign language is a powerful tool for developing confident, articulate, and culturally aware learners. Our French curriculum, rooted in the National Curriculum for Languages (KS2), aims to build strong foundations in language acquisition while fostering curiosity, respect, and intercultural understanding.

We are proud that French is taught by a specialist language teacher, ensuring high-quality, accurate language modelling and a rich, authentic experience for all pupils. Through engaging, progressive lessons, children develop the knowledge and confidence to understand and express themselves in French, while gaining a broader perspective of the world and their place within it.

Our ambition is that every child leaves Year 6 with a love of language learning, a secure grasp of French vocabulary and grammar and the cultural awareness to thrive as global citizens in an interconnected world.

Our French curriculum reflects the National Curriculum’s aims for pupils to: 

• understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources.
• 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.
• can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt.
• discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.

The aims as outlined above are embedded in a progressive and structured scheme of work that promotes language proficiency through listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

Understanding Language Development

Our approach is grounded in the science of language learning. Research shows that early language exposure:

• Enhances cognitive flexibility, memory, and problem-solving.
• Supports metalinguistic awareness, strengthening literacy in both the first language and the new language.
• Improves phonological awareness, contributing to stronger reading and spelling outcomes.

We prioritise spoken language and listening in the early stages of KS2, progressing to reading and writing with grammatical awareness and application by Year 6. Sentence stems, repetition, and oracy routines help embed syntax, structure, and fluency.

Valuing Bilingualism

Many of our pupils at Lady Margaret are already bilingual or multilingual. We celebrate this as a strength and draw on their lived experiences to make meaningful comparisons between languages.

We recognise that bilingual pupils may demonstrate:

• Enhanced listening skills and code-switching ability.
• Deep metalinguistic insight.
• Cultural empathy and international perspectives.

Our curriculum leverages these strengths, enabling all pupils—regardless of background—to thrive as language learners and contributors to our diverse school community.

• Inclusive and Ambitious: Every child can learn a language. Scaffolds, visuals, and modelled routines support all learners, including those with SEND or new to English.
• Culturally Enriching: We connect pupils with Francophone cultures across the world—France, Canada, Senegal, Haiti—to expand horizons and challenge stereotypes.
• Integrated with Whole School Learning: Cross-curricular links to geography, music, history, and literacy deepen understanding and reinforce vocabulary and context.
• Celebratory and Fun: Language learning is joyful. We celebrate achievements through assemblies, performances, French Days, and pen-pal exchanges.

• Understand and respond to familiar spoken phrases and questions with increasing fluency and accuracy.
• Speak in sentences, using correct pronunciation and intonation, to express opinions, ask and answer questions, and present information.
• Read simple texts with understanding and use decoding strategies to access unfamiliar vocabulary.
• Write short paragraphs using a range of familiar vocabulary, conjunctions, and grammatical structures.
• Apply knowledge of French phonics and grammar to new contexts with confidence.
• Reflect on similarities and differences between French and English, as well as between French and pupils’ home languages.
• Develop a love of languages and be well-prepared for the KS3 curriculum in secondary school.

French curriculum termly overview