M.F.L

Be curious            Be expressive          Be a communicator

At St Mary’s Catholic Primary School, our MFL curriculum focuses on Italian , and enables children to learn a foreign language that is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality curriculum fosters pupils’ curiosity and deepens their understanding of the world. Pupils at St Mary’s can express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. We provide opportunities for our pupils to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read great literature in the original language. Language teaching provides our children the foundation for learning further languages once they leave us.

Intent

At St. Mary’s, we want all our children to gain the skills and confidence in their foreign language learning journey and to create an opening to other cultures that deepens their understanding of the world and foster curiosity. Pupils at St Mary’s can express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. Our focus on modern foreign languages is on practical communication. At St Mary's, our focus will be to provide a linguistic foundation for reading comprehension and an appreciation of classical civilisation. Pupils take part in oral exchanges, while discussion of what they read will be conducted in English.

The National Curriculum states, ‘Teaching of any foreign language should focus on enabling pupils to make substantial progress in one language. The teaching should provide an appropriate balance of spoken and written language and should lay the foundations for further foreign language teaching... It should enable pupils to understand and communicate ideas, facts and feelings in speech and writing, focused on familiar and routine matters, using their knowledge of phonology, grammatical structures and vocabulary.’

Implementation 

Within our school we teach the National Curriculum through a targeted and pedagogy informed curriculum, that is taught using our ambitious and sequenced curriculum. The programmes of study for Italian at St Mary’s are constructed by pupil learning and progression in the main language learning skills – speaking, listening, reading and writing. 

Our curriculum for languages aims to ensure that all pupils:  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  can write at varying length, 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 the language studied.

Our lessons are centred on a learning focus, meaning new vocabulary and knowledge is recycled and reused in modern foreign language sessions, meaning sessions can have an explicit grammar or oracy focus. In addition to this, we use the spelling and grammar patterns in Italian towards the etymology of words within our spellings in the English and wider curriculum.

Impact

As a result of our teaching of writing at St Mary’s you will see:

Children that are skilled, confident and enthusiastic linguists. The impact on our children is that they have the knowledge and skills to be able to speak and write successfully in Italian for a purpose and in front of an audience. With the implementation of the learning sequence being established and taught in both key stages, children are able to:

listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding to questions and activities. Children can explore the patterns and sounds of Italian through songs and rhymes and link the spelling, sound and meaning of words. Our pupils engage in conversations; ask and answer questions; express opinions and respond to those of others;  speak in sentences, using familiar vocabulary, phrases and basic language structures. Across both key stages children can accurately use appropriate pronunciation and intonation so that others understand when they are reading aloud or using familiar words and phrases. Pupils have a broad vocabulary and understand new words that are introduced into familiar written material. In addition to this, children are able to write phrases from memory, and adapt these to create new sentences, to express ideas clearly and can describe people, places, things and actions orally and in writing.

Our learners go into the world able to communicate effectively, are confident and take their linguistic knowledge onto the next stage of their education and into their adult lives.

 Enrichment

• Children have cooking opportunities that immerse them into the culture of Italy, make links to other cultures and to apply their oracy and vocabulary skills taught in lessons.
• Children have access to literature and other cultural media to further enhance their enrichment of Italian. 
• Themed days where children partake in conversations in a setting that is linked to Italian culture.
• Opportunities to apply their oracy and vocabulary skills with staff who speak fluent Italian.