French at Burnt Oak Junior School

At Burnt Oak Junior School, French is taught using resources from the online platform Language Angels. This carefully structured scheme of work ensures progression across all four years of Key Stage 2 and is closely aligned with the five key strands outlined in the KS2 Languages Framework:

• Oracy
• Literacy
• Intercultural Understanding
• Knowledge About Languages
• Language Learning Strategies

“Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality languages education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world.”
— National Curriculum, 2014

The curriculum enables children to develop a sense of belonging to the wider world. They learn to express their thoughts and ideas in French and begin to understand and respond to spoken and written language. We aim to equip pupils with essential, practical communication skills that are increasingly important in today’s global society.

Through interactive methods such as games, flashcards, and songs, pupils develop foundational knowledge of French. They learn vocabulary and language structures that support them in asking and answering questions, listening to and reading stories, poems, and songs, and writing basic phrases and sentences from memory.

Our ICE Approach to Languages:

• Inspire: We inspire pupils to develop a sense of global citizenship and belonging to the wider world.
• Challenge: We challenge pupils to express themselves in another language and to understand and respond to others, building practical communication skills for life.
• Engage: We engage pupils through fun, interactive methods—including flashcards, games, and songs—to help them develop confidence and fluency in French.

In our French lessons, we aim to spark children’s curiosity and provide a window into other cultures. Through language learning, pupils explore the connections between language and identity, develop a broader international perspective, and grow in their understanding of the world and their place within it.