Modern Foreign Languages

We are a well-resourced department of 4 full-time staff and two part-time staff, based in our own suite of languages rooms. We teach French across the age range and begin Spanish with the whole cohort in year 8 for 12 weeks. This year (2021), due to the lockdown, we have had to adapt our curriculum for our year 9 students, so they can have the opportunity to study French and Spanish every week.

Students may then opt to study French, or Spanish or both at GCSE level. We also offer weekly intervention sessions after school for targeted students who need to develop their exam skills.

We aim to enable students to understand and use the foreign language they are learning to be able to use it in real life contexts both when visiting another country, or when meeting French or Spanish speaking people in our own country.

Curriculum intent

Through the MFL curriculum, we want to:

• Foster a love of learning another language which provides the opportunity to develop the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
• Develop the pupils’ oracy, fluency, spontaneity, and communicative skills by enabling the students to express their ideas and thoughts with confidence in another language and to understand and respond to native speakers both in speech and in writing.
• Provide opportunities for the students to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read great literature in the original language (They do a lot of this at GCSE level with the literary component in the section B-reading).
• Enable the students to 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 in class.
• Help the students to write at varying length, for different purposes using the variety of grammatical structures and complex structures that they have learnt
• Foster the children’s curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world around them.
• Develop the students’ cultural capital and awareness of France and French speaking countries and they diverse way of life.
• Provide an opening to other cultures and encourage pupils to appreciate and celebrate difference.
• Provide the foundation for learning other languages.
• Give students the opportunity to study and work in other countries and have a real advantage in an international job market.
• Develop the pupils’ critical thinking when they analyse grammatical structures.

We do this across for different skills: Listening, speaking. The skill areas are listening, speaking, reading and writing:

Listening

Students learn how to identify sound patterns and characteristics of the spoken language as well as how to identify the gist and detail of an item of speech and progressively longer recordings.

Speaking

Students are encouraged to contribute increasingly to spontaneous talk in the classroom in the foreign language.  They learn how to extend and add interest, intonation and expression to their speech as they advance. The use of idiomatic expressions used in the French-speaking country is also encouraged.

Reading

Throughout Key Stages students learn techniques on how to approach a written text and gain understanding from it.  Students meet a range of extended reading materials in class and have access to non-fiction books to improve their vocabulary and comprehension skills. In a year 7, we have introduced a reading scheme to enable students to recognise sounds and read with more confidence.

Writing

As students are progressing, they learn how to move from simple to more complex structures of language which can be manipulated to support students’ development in this skill area towards students planning and writing extended paragraphs in the foreign language. Students in KS3 must write pieces of extended writing, after each new topic learnt. In April, students are then asked to compile all their redrafted paragraphs in order to have a longer writing that will embed all the learning done in the year.

Learning a language also offers lots of transferable skills such as communication skills, adaptability/resilience /resourcefulness, independent learner, cultural development, and global awareness.

The curriculum provides breadth and depth as the student will revisit topics studied at Key Stage 3 and will go into each of them much more deeply at KS4.

As the course goes on, the students develop a greater understanding of the French language as well as different aspects of French culture through the range of themes and topics studied.

The topics for KS3 and KS4 have been chosen based on the GCSE specification and we have strategically planned out when to teach them and how long to dedicate to each of them, allowing plenty of time for revision.

At KS3 with follow the National Curriculum and base most of our teaching on the EXPO 1-4 books. We also strive to incorporate authentic texts and resources from the internet to give pupils first-hand understanding of the French culture in France but also in other French speaking countries.

Cultural knowledge and contact

This is an intrinsic feature of every stage of language learning and enables students to learn about where in the world the foreign language is spoken, the cultures and people that it represents, what we can learn about those cultures and how they are different from our own.

Homework is identified in each unit of work. Learning homework will be set every week for all KS3 students (year 7, 8 and 9). We will be expecting students to learn their keywords correctly as they will be assessed regularly with low-stake testing.

A range of worksheets will also be given to pupils to reinforce the learning done in class. Extension tasks or challenges will also be available at students’ request to stretch pupils’ learning.

Homework

Homework is identified in each unit of work. Learning homework will be set every week for all KS3 students (year 7, 8 and 9). We will be expecting students to learn their keywords correctly as they will be assessed regularly with low-stake testing.

A range of worksheets will also be given to pupils to reinforce the learning done in class. Extension tasks or challenges will also be available at students’ request to stretch pupils’ learning.

Schemes of Work and Content

KS3 French Year 7 Curriculum

KS3 French Year 8 Curriculum

KS3 French Year 9 Curriculum

KS3 Spanish Year 9 Curriculum

French GCSE Exam and Curriculum

Spanish GCSE Exam and Curriculum

EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

Intervention sessions are offered outside of lessons to support learning beyond the classroom. They are offered to both Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 3 students who wish to expand their experience further, these are in French and Spanish afterschool. The European Day of Languages is an annual event greatly anticipated and enjoyed by the whole school community where students get to learn a wide range of languages.

EDUCATIONAL VISITS

The department places great emphasis on visits abroad, as the opportunity to visit the country where the language is spoken, has a greater impact on students’ learning and helps them put their learning in context, as well as giving it a purpose. This way, the pupils can also find out more about the culture and the geography of the country.

Every year, the students who take parts in the trips abroad, greatly value and appreciate the variety in which learning takes place.

In the past, the year 7 students were given the opportunity to go to Boulogne for the day to learn how to make croissants. Year 8 students visited the Christmas market in Lille, and there were trips to Paris for Year 10 and 11 students.

We are unfortunately not able to go abroad this year due to the current pandemic and the government restrictions.

For more information on clubs and trips, please visit the relevant page.

Feedback in MFL

Marking at KS3

Formative marking at Key Stage 3

• All classwork is ticked as a minimum and should show evidence of self-assessment by students in green.
• Key pieces of work (mainly large written tasks) that display levels of skills are marked for literacy using the MFL editing code and will only be annotated if this can help the students improve on their work. However, if similar mistakes are very common within a class, planned live feedback will take place and the main ideas from the feedback with good examples will be typed and given to students to stick in their books.
• The students will be asked to read the typed comments and either tick or highlight in green aspects of the work they have done well, or in orange or pink, things they still need to work on to reach the expected level.
• As often as possible, students will be asked to correct literacy errors in green for 5-10 minutes at the start of a chosen lesson.
• A paper task/starter based on misconceptions, or a range of hinge questions can also be given to students to elucidate common misconceptions identified in the students’ work.
• Tasks can take the form of a small written sheet that students need to complete or a tick list mark sheet for them to see what they need to add to their work to make it better.
• Follow-up tasks should not be allowed to build up and there should be no more than two tasks that need completing at any time. When tasks are completed, they are ticked by students or the class teacher (a stamp can be used).
• If tasks are not completed satisfactorily, the student can be issued a detention to complete it.
• Homework is set every week (depending on the volume of work).  -All homework is peer or self-assessed and grades or effort recorded on the teacher’s electronic sheet using a RAG system.
• Homework will be varied and can take the form of a learning homework or a written homework.
• Regular spelling tests will be done at least every 3/4 lesson to ensure progress and also to check that the students have learnt their keywords for homework.
• Students can then be asked to peer-assess their work or to self-assess it and write the correction down in the templates available in their books. Students will use a red pen to self-assess their work and a green pen to write the correction down in their books. Teachers will need to always ensure the right colour in used.

Marking of Summative Assessment at Key Stage 3

•  The students will have at least 2 summative milestones assessment per year. The assessment will include GCSE skills (writing, photo card etc.) done at different times of the year).
• Each student will then record their grade and their target on the orange milestones sheet used by all MFL teachers.
• At KS3, the whole-school writing scheme called “Right to Write” (R2W) will help the students develop their grammatical accuracy and master the language structures.
• The students will have the opportunity to draft and redraft their R2W several times to improve on their paragraphs and learn through their mistakes.
• Rigorous and regular marking of the pupils’ work will need to be done, in particular, for year 7 students, to ensure a strong learning process of complex structures and also to prepare them better for GCSE.
• If similar mistakes are apparent in a class, teachers will use this as an opportunity to draw the pupils’ attention on specific learning points to move the class forward.
• Comments will not be written in books and instead shared as whole class feedback.

Feedback on work seen in MFL books

• MFL teachers will ensure that the presentation of the books is good and will give students some specific feedback on how to present work to a high standard
• This precise feedback will usually be done at the beginning of the year to set the tone and the teacher will model as much as possible and show examples of good practice to ensure good habits are taken from the beginning.
• Homework will be set every week in the form of keywords learning or worksheets related to the work done in class.
• In terms of keywords learning, the students will be given regular spelling tests on a specific template stuck in students’ books to address literacy errors. The students will then be able to track progress on their spelling tracking sheets.
• The students results will also be recorded on the teachers’ electronic spreadsheets to inform intervention needs.
• The students will always receive immediate verbal feedback for any other set homework from worksheets, as the teacher will go through the correction with the students who will correct their work individually in green.
• When the homework is due, the teacher will go round the class and make a note of students who have not done the work and set sanctions accordingly.
• Students’ books will be collected before the end of a module to ensure students have taken the correction effectively and feedback provided the following lesson when students get their books back.
• At this point, the teacher will have a list of students who still need to complete some tasks either in the form of a PowerPoint or on paper.

Live feedback in the MFL class

• Verbal feedback in MFL takes place every lesson as a lot of target language is used.
• When a student says a sentences in the foreign language, the teacher corrects the student and can also ask the student to repeat the structure to ensure better pronunciation or intonation is used.
• If the same mistakes persist, choral repetition is used until the students get it right. To consolidate learning, the teacher will come back to the same structures in follow up lessons.
• When students written work is marked, the teacher will usually use the MFL editing code (SP, VT, Fem etc.) to address any literacy errors.
• Students should then receive a live feedback lesson in class time to give them time to correct errors in green pen and for the teacher to address misconceptions through modelling in stages on how to write correct structures
• Showing good exemplar work and/or re-doing the task together on the whiteboard, if the task is of great importance to achieve a top grade in the exam.
• The teacher will then set a similar follow-up task in the next lesson to improve the students’ understanding and work.
• Feedback can also be gathered by using a range of AFL strategies, including:
• Hinge questions during starter or plenary activities to check misconceptions or for a follow up task.
• The use of mini whiteboards for students to model an answer or to practice writing with accuracy before writing neatly in their MFL book.
• High ranking questioning, selecting various students who might not want to participate (hiders and avoiders).
• Multiple choice questions such as the use of the millionaire game, which is a fun but useful way to check misunderstanding.
• Exit tickets/post-its/twitter notes where students write what they are still struggling with at the end of a lesson.
• Low stakes spelling tests to assess knowledge of keywords.
• Peer/self-assessment using the green pens.
• Teachers circulating the room and checking the quality of the students’ work and offering more personalised feedback.
• When teachers notice different levels of misconceptions, they will prepare a task/starter activity to consolidate learning and give the pupils an opportunity to try again or ask questions if they are still struggling in the next lesson.
• The teacher will also be able to use the whiteboard to remodel an explanation of a particular concept at the board.
• In the case of an extended writing task, teachers may use the visualiser to show examples of good practice to support other students in the class with concrete examples and also because some students are more visual learners.
• Live lessons will happen after extended written tasks, during homework correction and after KS4 mock exams.

Marking at KS4

Formative marking for Key Stage 4

• Students’ work in books will not be marked by the teacher- However, the teacher will always provide verbal feedback and the correction to the work/homework set and students will self-assess their work every lesson.
• Individual teachers will be responsible for identifying key pieces of written work to check as staff use different approaches to topics.
• In French, students will have a specific writing book that will be marked for literacy and feedback will be given to the whole class. No grades will be given to students to force them to redraft and continue to improve on their work.
• Effort grades will be collected and put on the teacher’s electronic MFL spreadsheets in the shared area to track progress and plan for intervention.
• Students will be given verbal feedback to indicate areas that need improvement.
• For work specifically related to exam preparation (writing and speaking questions), the teacher will need to provide more help and re-write key terms that the students might not be able to change on their own to avoid delaying the memorisation of key paragraphs.
• Students will also be expected to learn their verbs regularly and will be given regular spelling tests to reinforce knowledge.
• Throughout the course, students will also be given the opportunity to write from memory in lessons on a range of topics to develop their spontaneous language.
• As much as possible, pupils will be made aware of the success criteria that AQA will be using to mark their work for writing and speaking. All students will get a copy of the criteria to stick in their “Gold Mine”.
• After a written mock paper, students will receive a coversheet with scores, grade breakdown and feedback on strengths and areas to develop. Students will have a subsequent feedback lesson to address misconception and model improvement.
• Student will have to reflect on their grade and compare it to the AQA mark scheme to understand how to make further progress.