At St Benedict’s, we study French as a Foreign Language. We follow a sequence of lessons using CUSP to support teaching. Our intent is to support our children in developing their understanding and a love of a second language. To equip them and give them the tools to support them when transitioning into secondary school. We aim to do this through fun and engaging lessons.
CUSP French has been intentionally crafted based on the principles of evidence-led practice, ensuring a dedicated emphasis on the high-quality development of children as linguists. The curriculum revisits core study areas throughout, with each unit concentrating on essential elements such as phonics, grammatical structures, reading, writing, oracy, and vocabulary. CUSP French is a comprehensive resource designed for both teachers and students, fostering consistency in French instruction across the school. It equips teachers, even those without prior knowledge of French, with the necessary subject expertise to effectively convey the content.
The French curriculum is designed to meet the needs of young linguists in the contemporary world. Deliberate emphasis is placed on key areas to ensure that students acquire knowledge and language relevant to engaging with crucial and practical topics like the environment, wellbeing, and travel. The curriculum not only focuses on vocabulary acquisition but also on the fundamental components essential for learning a new language.
Each block includes study of key MFL linguistic concepts and previously learnt language concepts to enable pupils to build on known themes and vocabulary. The core content overview outlines the substantive and disciplinary knowledge and key vocabulary that pupils will learn throughout each block of study. This includes the vocabulary, phonics and grammatical constructs that pupils will learn, as well as the opportunities to develop their reading, writing and oracy skills.
The National Curriculum for maintained schools in England stipulates that the teaching of foreign
languages is required at key stage 2 (ages 7 11). This can be in any modern foreign language (MFL).
.
Key aspects of study that are explicitly referenced in the National Curriculum for MFL include:
• vocabulary acquisition
• varied oracy opportunities, including engagement in conversation
• phonics and accurate pronunciation
• grammatical knowledge
• reading and listening for meaning
• sentence composition
• simple writing tasks.
These are all carefully represented in the CUSP French curriculum.
Revisiting is inherently built into the architecture of the French curriculum. This can be seen in
many places, such as:
• between individual blocks in each year group on the long-term sequence
• within blocks in the Remember part of each lesson
• in the quizzing that can be used throughout, at the end of and after a block of study.
Teachers should seek to revisit key language as frequently as possible. This could be through normal classroom interactions, for example greeting pupils, telling the time, discussing classroom equipment or when giving instructions. This will help pupils to remember knowledge that they have learnt during their French lessons.
