The National Curriculum informs our vision of a curriculum that underpins a key school vision of “excellence for all”. Teaching focuses on developing the breadth and depth of pupils’ competence in listening, speaking, reading and writing, based on a sound foundation of core grammar and vocabulary, building on foundations from Key Stage Two, even if students have had varying experiences at primary school. Our baseline assessment and one to one conversations with each individual student when they join us, enables us to provide a personalised curriculum that is appropriate to all students regardless of prior experience or ability. Students’ interests and needs to communicate are integral to planning our curriculum, but most recently, we have reviewed our curriculum to include crucial cross-curricular topics at an appropriate time in a student’s learning journey, timing topics to enhance and consolidate learning in other subjects e.g. introducing environmental issues in Year 8, when students are exploring these issues in Geography, and teaching healthy lifestyles in French to revisit and reinforce messages in Food Technology and as part of our SMSC curriculum. We also very much encourage the promotion of general literacy and numeracy skills, such as spellings strategies and drawing grammar and language derivation parallels with English, and the use of numbers, currency and time in French. Effective teaching in all areas for all abilities of students involves continual dialogue between language teachers but also discussion with colleagues in other subject areas. 

As subject leader, I am constantly reviewing the content of our curriculum in collaboration with my departmental colleague and other subject staff to ensure it is relevant and engaging for students, but also enables students to learn the necessary skills for GCSE and A-level study and beyond and so that the language learnt can be used in the workplace in later life and even for travel and leisure. We are lucky to be a department of two experienced teachers with outstanding subject knowledge, but who as non-native speakers understand the process of language learning from the inside. We have access to excellent training, both in school and through local SLEs to ensure we are constantly updating and reviewing both our curriculum content and delivery. We have worked hard this year to look more at collaboratively planning resources for students, so they have equal opportunity but also have a personalised experience, ensuring that essential differentiation takes place in mixed ability classes, allowing all students to be “the best that they can be” and make their personal best progress.

Grammar forms the essential scaffolding of our language curriculum necessary to underpin use of language in various topics and is at the heart of helping develop excellent linguists and communicators. We have carefully planned opportunities for students to logically build grammar progression and to revisit this previous knowledge and skills in new contexts over key stage three and four. This spiral of progression allows students to make progress with new concepts but also to embed and deepen understanding over time. For example, students might first meet some examples of past perfect tense in Year 7 in a reading activity, and learn them as lexical items, look more deeply at how to form the past grammatically early in Year 8, in the context of a trip to Paris and then extend that knowledge of the past perfect tense in discussions about free time in Year 9, in combination with present and future tense verbs. Core grammar teaching prepares students for the rigours of the new GCSE examinations at KS4 but also allows students to build their own language in real life situations.

We try to use as much appropriate target language in lessons as possible to allow students to see the real purpose of language as communication, and not just an academic skill and to build listening and speaking skills. We also take every curriculum opportunity to look at cultural and geographical knowledge and understanding of France and the francophone world, and these learning opportunities are built into and interwoven into each language unit, something our students find fascinating and relevant to their own lives e.g. comparing, contrasting and evaluating school systems in France and the UK.