Modern Foreign Languages (French)
At Dymchurch Primary School, we want children to see French as a living language that enables them to communicate, explore and understand the wider world. From Year 3 onwards, our carefully sequenced curriculum builds children's confidence in speaking and listening, giving them regular opportunities to hear, practise, retrieve and use French for a real purpose.
Our curriculum is built around three interconnected strands: Communication, Description and Culture. Children progressively build useful vocabulary and sentence structures through conversation, role play, games, songs and practical activities, with pronunciation explicitly modelled and revisited. Learning is carefully sequenced so that children continually retrieve and build upon previously taught language, developing from learning to communicate in Year 3 towards becoming confident communicators by the end of Year 6.
What makes French at Dymchurch particularly special is the way we connect language learning with culture, history, art and our own local heritage. Children explore Paris and the geography of France, discover the work of French artists such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and investigate the fascinating relationship between France and England. From our local Martello Towers and their connection to the threat of Napoleonic invasion, to the Battle of Hastings and Norman Conquest and their lasting influence on the English language, children discover that the connections between our two countries can be found all around us. As they progress through KS2, they also explore France and Britain's relationship during the Second World War before looking beyond France to discover the wider Francophone world.
Through cultural celebrations, food, art, history and special experiences such as our whole-school Bastille Day, we aim to make French memorable and meaningful. By the end of Key Stage 2, we want children to be able to use a carefully chosen core of French confidently and accurately, while leaving Dymchurch with curiosity about other languages and cultures and strong foundations for continuing their language learning at secondary school.
