French

The French KS3 Curriculum will develop learners’ communication skills, knowledge and understanding of the language.  There are clear educational, personal, cultural, social and career benefits in being able to communicate in a foreign language. This will foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of other cultures on a local, national and international stage. The focus is on the following areas:

• 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.

• Write at varying lengths, 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 French.

• Being motivated and engaged in their own language learning.

There are 13 Units that focus on the assessment of knowledge, skills and practices:

Year 7 Overview

Unit 1: Introducing yourself

Unit 2: Free Time and Activities

Unit 3: Where people live

Unit 4: Identity and Relationships

Learners begin the year with a lot of speaking, with a particular focus on phonics.

Pupils then focus on the other three skills reading, writing and listening. Pupils learn the future tense.

Year 8 Overview

Unit 5: Travel and Tourism

Unit 6: Media – Film, TV and Books

Unit 7: Celebrity culture

Unit 8: Customs, Festivals and Celebrations

Pupils extend and manipulate language through grammar to suit different contexts. Pupils are introduced to verb paradigms and learn how to conjugate some irregular verbs to form compound tenses.

Year 9 Overview

Unit 9: Education – School

Unit 10: Work and Future Plans

Unit 11: Technology

Unit 12: Healthy Living

Unit 13: The Environment

Pupils use both language and grammar from Y7-8 and in different settings. Pupils are taught the past tense in full. There is a strong emphasis on reading and writing.

• Students have 1 hour of lessons per week in years 7, 8 and 9.

• Teaching will focus on developing the breadth and depth of pupils’ competence in listening, speaking, reading and writing, based on a foundation of core grammar and vocabulary.

• Formative assessment opportunities occur regularly throughout the academic year as well as summative assessments at the end of each unit.

By the end of Key Stage 3 students would have accomplished the following:

• Gained a solid understanding of aspects of grammar, including up to 5 tenses. 

• Seen a wide variety of texts, including authentic material.

• Written in extended formats, both from a personal point of view and ‘for a purpose’.

• Spent some time working in groups to complete performance-based speaking assessments.

• Gained an understanding of Francophone cultures, especially those outside of metropolitan France.

• 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.

Our Key Stage 3 curriculum is meeting the National Curriculum requirements by developing reading, writing, speaking and listening competencies and providing a foundation for further study beyond KS3 which is reinforced through a spiral scheme of learning.