Unlock a world of languages...

Modern Foreign Languages Vision

Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) at Hucknall Flying High Academy allows children to be confident communicating in their own and other foreign languages. They have the tools and confidence to 'have a go' and the subject knowledge to begin to communicate and connect across the world. Children are enthusiastic and understand the relevance and 'real world' application of learning and applying a MFL to their life, futures and their community. MFL teaching and learning nurtures children to show understanding, curiosity, compassion, tolerance and the ability to learn from children/people from other cultures. Overcoming language barriers to learn from other cultures, and having the curiosity to want to immerse themselves, has never been easier than in this digital society - we need to make sure we give the children the tools and opportunities to use this. MFL at Hucknall FHA aims to provide inclusive and aspirational choices about their own futures while overcoming any barriers and misconceptions.

Aims

Our MFL curriculum aims for pupils to:

• 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 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.

We are aspirant for all children to leave Hucknall Flying High Academy as linguists. Please policy appendix: ‘What make a great linguist?’ for further information.

Intent

At Hucknall Flying High Academy, our curriculum is based on the National Curriculum for Key Stages 1 & 2 and the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework. These documents stipulate the expectations which inform the intent of our curriculum, ensuring a high ambition for all. Further ambition is gleaned through the use of expert resources from the MFL Association.

Statements from the National Curriculum for MFL have been broken down and sequenced into strands and year groups. We call this a key knowledge progression document (KKPD). It contains key substantive, procedural and disciplinary knowledge that children need to know and remember.

Composite knowledge from the KKPD is mapped on to a whole school long-term plan and sequenced onto a MFL subject map. Links are made across year groups and subjects through deliberate and diverse content choices. 

Each MFL KKPD statement is broken down into component (granular) knowledge and key vocabulary. These are used to support the creation of learning sequences and to identify ‘sticky knowledge’ – the most important knowledge children need to remember for the next stage.

The MFL KKPD and component knowledge progression are used by teachers to create learning sequences and objectives. These are plotted on an enquiry or a discrete medium-term plan. Please see our ‘Curriculum Structure Flowchart’ for further information.

Implementation

Individual lessons are planned in detail using our lesson design model. This has been informed by leading research such as Rosenshine’s principles of instruction. The model includes five, flexible elements:

• Reactivate
• Teach, facilitate, model
• Learning together
• Independent practice
• Reflection.

We use a range of varied teaching strategies to deliver MFL lessons:

• Speaking and Listening: We aim to emphasise the speaking and listening skills over the reading and writing skills with the younger children and balance the skills out as they move into UKS2. We make the lessons as entertaining and enjoyable as possible, as we realise that this approach serves to develop a positive attitude in the children to the learning of modern foreign languages. Active engagement in lessons is encouraged through games, role-play and songs as well as using puppets etc., to demonstrate new vocabulary and phonics. Mime, actions and repetition are used in each lesson to aide long-term memory retention. We build children’s confidence through constant praise for any contribution they make in the foreign language, however tentative.
• Reading: This is taught initially through the alphabet and phonics, building up confidence through stories and vocabulary. We use a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar dual language stories and video stories for the children to translate and talk about as well as comics and non-fiction texts.
• Writing: This is taught progressively from simple phrases and words in Y3 to complete stories and reports in Y6.

Impact

Our carefully planned curriculum is the model of progression in MFL. We strive for our children to know, remember and understand more of what they have been taught.

Children’s learning is assessed during lessons using AfL. Ongoing assessment identifies areas to revisit in future lessons.

An assessment of prior learning is used at the beginning of each unit to establish their prior knowledge, confidence and what has been stored in their long-term memory.

At the end of each unit, a quiz is completed to test their listening, speaking, reading and writing understanding and application of the unit taught.

The ultimate impact of MFL teaching and learning at Hucknall Flying High Academy is for the children to leave confident with the knowledge and skills to become successful linguists in their Secondary MFL education.

Our trust has developed a comprehensive subject leadership toolkit. We have ensured that all subject leaders have received training on this. The document provides a range of monitoring tools including a methodology for checking the quality of education that pupils receive in MFL. We call this methodology a ‘focused review’. This tool allows us to monitor, check and connect evidence together to form robust judgements about the quality of education that pupils receive in MFL. We use work scrutiny, pupil discussions and lesson visits effectively to achieve this.