Weston Village Primary SchoolModern Foreign Languages: French
French at Weston
At Weston Village Primary School, children learn French from Year 3 to Year 6.
We want pupils to become confident and curious language learners who are willing to listen carefully, speak aloud, notice patterns, take risks and communicate meaning.
Learning French helps children understand that languages have their own sounds, structures and conventions. It also broadens their awareness of life beyond their immediate community and provides a strong foundation for further language learning at secondary school.
What Children Learn
Our French curriculum develops four closely connected areas:
listening
speaking
reading
writing
These are supported by progressively developing knowledge of vocabulary, phonics and pronunciation, grammar and sentence structure.
Children repeatedly encounter familiar language in different contexts so that they move beyond memorising individual words towards understanding and constructing increasingly useful sentences.
Listening and Speaking
Spoken language is central to learning French.
Children listen carefully to words, phrases, questions and sentences and learn to distinguish and reproduce unfamiliar French sounds.
They develop confidence in:
repeating and recalling language
responding to questions
asking questions of their own
expressing likes, dislikes and preferences
giving information about themselves and others
taking part in short conversations.
In Year 3, for example, pupils ask and answer questions about colours, pets, age and food.
As they progress, conversations become less dependent on fixed responses. By Years 5 and 6, pupils discuss areas such as routines, television and film, jobs, sport, technology and holidays using a broader range of vocabulary and structures.
Reading
Children learn to recognise familiar vocabulary and grammatical patterns in written French.
They build confidence in reading words, phrases and increasingly developed sentences, using what they know about vocabulary, context and French sound-spelling relationships to support understanding.
Because much of the language pupils learn is encountered through speaking, reading and writing, children increasingly make connections between how French looks and how it sounds.
Writing
Writing develops alongside spoken language.
In Year 3, pupils begin by writing familiar vocabulary and short sentences about topics such as colours, pets, rooms and food.
Over time, they learn to adapt familiar sentence patterns rather than simply copy them.
By Year 4, pupils write sentences containing elements such as verbs, indefinite articles, time phrases and opinions.
In Years 5 and 6, children use a wider range of grammatical structures to communicate increasingly precise meaning.
Vocabulary
Secure vocabulary is essential for communication.
Children learn vocabulary through meaningful contexts such as:
colours, pets, body parts, numbers, home, food, weather, clothes, town, school, transport, hobbies, routines, animals, jobs, mealtimes, sport, technology and travel.
The vocabulary becomes progressively more useful because children are expected to combine it with previously learned words and grammatical structures rather than learn each topic in isolation.
Retrieval and reuse are therefore important parts of language learning.
Grammar
Children gradually develop an understanding of how French sentences are constructed.
They encounter grammatical ideas through the language they are learning rather than as disconnected rules.
Across Key Stage 2, this includes areas such as:
nouns and articles
singular and plural forms
masculine and feminine forms
adjective position and agreement
verbs
negative constructions
conjunctions
adverbs and adverbial phrases
possessive adjectives
present, future and past constructions.
For example, Year 4 pupils use the verb porter, indefinite articles, determiners and time phrases.
Year 5 develops this further through adjective agreement, the verb être and future constructions.
By Year 6, pupils use adjective agreement more deliberately, choose between constructions such as je joue and je fais, use possessive adjectives and encounter the perfect tense when talking about holidays.
Phonics and Pronunciation
Learning a language also means learning how its sounds work.
Children are taught to listen closely to French pronunciation and recognise that letters and combinations of letters do not always represent the same sounds as they do in English.
They practise saying unfamiliar words and phrases accurately and use their growing awareness of French sound patterns to support both listening and reading.
The aim is not accent perfection. We want children to develop the confidence and knowledge to make themselves understood and to approach unfamiliar French words intelligently.
Asking and Answering Questions
A particularly strong feature of the curriculum is the repeated expectation that children interact, rather than simply recite vocabulary.
From Year 3 onwards, pupils repeatedly ask and answer questions about the language they are learning.
This develops through questions about weather, transport, hobbies and school in Year 4, and later about routines, preferences, jobs, technology, sport and holidays.
This helps children see French as a language for communication, not simply a collection of words to remember.
Culture and the Wider World
Learning French also gives children opportunities to learn that languages are connected with people, places and cultures.
Pupils encounter cultural information where it contributes meaningfully to their language learning and begin to understand that French is spoken in different places and communities.
In Year 6, pupils explicitly consider why learning another language is useful and learn facts about countries where French is spoken.
The aim is to develop curiosity and cultural awareness without reducing French-speaking cultures to a collection of festivals, foods or stereotypes.
How Learning Develops
In Year 3, children establish the foundations of French through familiar vocabulary, simple sentence structures and frequent spoken interaction. They learn to say, read and write language about colours, pets, body parts, numbers, home and food.
In Year 4, pupils extend their language through weather, clothes, places in town, school, transport and hobbies. They begin using a wider range of verbs, articles, opinions, time expressions and grammatical agreement.
In Year 5, children use increasingly developed language to discuss television and film, routines, personal description, wild animals, jobs and mealtimes. Grammar includes adjective agreement, être, adverbial phrases and future constructions.
In Year 6, pupils draw together previous learning and work with increasingly demanding sentence structures through areas including fashion, sport, technology, travel and healthy living. They use present, future and past language and begin to manipulate vocabulary and grammar with greater independence.
How We Teach French
Language learning depends on hearing, rehearsing, retrieving and reusing language frequently.
Our whole-school teaching routines support this.
I → We → You allows teachers to model pronunciation and sentence structures before pupils rehearse them together and then use them independently.
Scaffold → Fade means word banks, sentence stems, visual prompts and modelled language can support pupils initially and be gradually reduced.
Retrieval, little and often is particularly important in French because vocabulary and structures need frequent revisiting to become secure.
Words & Visuals supports understanding of unfamiliar vocabulary and helps pupils connect spoken and written language.
Lessons include regular opportunities to hear, say, read and write French rather than treating these as entirely separate skills.
Inclusion in French
French is for every pupil.
Teachers make adaptations so that children can participate successfully in spoken and written language learning.
Support may include:
visual prompts
gestures
repeated modelling
reduced language load
additional rehearsal
sentence stems
word banks
paired practice
alternative recording where appropriate.
The aim is to preserve the important language-learning goal while reducing unnecessary barriers.
For some pupils, speaking a new language can feel particularly demanding. Rehearsal and supported participation allow confidence to develop without removing the expectation that every child engages with French.
Assessment
Assessment takes place through normal language learning.
Teachers listen to pupils' spoken responses and consider their reading and writing to identify what children can understand and communicate.
Assessment looks at whether pupils can increasingly:
recall and use vocabulary
understand spoken French
respond appropriately
ask and answer questions
read familiar language
construct written sentences
use taught grammatical patterns
adapt previous learning in a new context.
Retrieval helps teachers identify vocabulary or structures that need further practice before new learning is introduced.
Preparing for Secondary School
By the end of Year 6, we want pupils to have more than a collection of memorised French phrases.
They should understand some of the fundamental ways a language works and have experience of:
listening carefully, reproducing unfamiliar sounds, asking and answering questions, reading for meaning, writing sentences and manipulating vocabulary and grammar.
These foundations help prepare children for the increased demands of language learning at secondary school, whether they continue with French or begin another language.
Our French Curriculum
The document below shows how French learning develops from Year 3 to Year 6.