Middle School French

Overview

In Middle School French, we put the emphasis on teaching the right balance of four skills in the same lesson. Practising reading, listening, speaking and writing skills helps the students’ language awareness and increases their ability to be accurate in all forms of communication. It also ensures that they are exposed to the same vocabulary in different ways. Building on from their Lower School experience, the students are encouraged to improve on their aural recognition in starter activities. The new vocabulary and sentence patterns are taught at the beginning of every lesson with the help of visuals for meaning. Students will then be required to progressively assimilate certain sentence patterns to develop their understanding. More able students might opt to choose differentiated tasks.

This mix of activities in the same lesson will reinforce the new vocabulary and sentence structures for students who learn in different ways in mixed ability groups. We ask students to listen for detail or for gist, to practise role plays, do some creative writing or practise a new sentence structure in a grammar exercise. Reading activities also feature regularly with questions in the target language of true or false exercises.

We use the ‘Voila’ coursebook throughout Middle School. ‘Voila’ has a clear layout which facilitates explanations in the target language. We have extended activity booklets for students who have a good grasp of the language.

It is not a disadvantage for pupils who have not studied French in their previous school to join The King Alfred School in Year 7.

Assessment of work

In lessons, the department uses formative assessment on a regular basis. We do not want to formally assess every activity we do and the use of traffic lighting techniques enables the students to let us how well they are doing. Students regularly fill in self-assessment forms to let us know which aspects of French they have not fully understood.

However, we also rely on traditional vocabulary testing and we devise assessment common to the department a couple of times a year. These tests are invaluable in helping us to identify which topic areas or grammar point could be taught again. The students’ self-assessment forms also give us a fair idea how much has been retained.

Homework

As frequent exposure is the key to language learning there will be homework at least once a week in French. This will not always be formal as posters, PowerPoint presentations and interviews in the target language feature at regular intervals. However, students are regularly assessed on vocabulary or an important grammar point in end of unit tests.

Parental involvement

We have successfully worked with parents whose children find languages difficult. In some cases it has been extremely successful to e-mail parents to inform them of their son or daughter’s homework, progress or difficulties. Then, the parents ensure that their child spends sufficient time on his or her language homework.

Further study

GCSE & A Level.