Languages: Upper Key Stage 2 French

Reviewing noun gender, article-noun agreement and adjective placement while exploring monster and body part vocabulary; identifying key facts using cognates and other language detective skills; writing and presenting paragraphs about a ‘Fantastic French beast’ creation.

Developing listening and language detective skills through a space theme; using figurative language and developing sentence structure by adding adjectives and prepositions; making simple adjectival comparisons.

Pupils learn to construct high numbers in French, develop food-related vocabulary through games, stories and role-play and build on their understanding of sentence structures, questions and phrases, equipping themselves with language they could use when shopping in France. They also develop their language detective skills, facing an entirely unfamiliar authentic French text.

Pupils discover that there are many countries in the world that speak French, and they learn to give and follow directions in French, discuss climate and use comparative language, which they practise as they explore different French-speaking countries and the cultural treasures belonging to those countries.

Pupils identify the infinitive form of verbs, and subject pronouns, then group French verbs into -er, -ir and -re categories before learning the -er regular verb endings, practising with a set of regular action verbs; they discover that not all verbs are regular and learn the foundation verbs ‘avoir’ and ‘être’, and finally produce a short piece of creative writing to demonstrate their learning, which they present to the class.

This unit draws on vocabulary and grammar learned in Years 3, 4 and 5, introduces family and relations vocabulary, the possessive adjective, my, and how to express likes and dislikes. The children learn that they can compose a written composition by recycling and re-ordering known words and phrases and the unit culminates in pupils producing a piece of written work, in French, describing members of a family, their looks, their ages, their birthdays and their likes and dislikes.

Pupils conjugate the verb ‘aller’- to go, identify correct prepositions, learn sports vocabulary, how to express preferences plus the infinitive. They expand their knowledge of country names and develop their cultural knowledge of Pétanque, the Tour de France and the Olympics, consolidating their learning by writing a magazine article about participating in the Olympic Games.

In this football-themed unit, pupils develop and practise many important learning strategies that they can use in their future learning of other languages and subjects. Children develop their reading, speaking and listening skills, responding to questions about footballers, building to writing their own football player profiles in French based on research of a chosen player.

Pupils learn how to describe a house, the different rooms and who lives there. They also learn about prepositions to explain where items are arranged in their bedrooms and consolidate the grammar and vocabulary they have learned by writing a letter to describe their family, home and bedroom.

The children learn to use a combination of present and near-future tenses, and become familiar with holiday-related vocabulary around packing a suitcase and planning a journey. They explore which countries they might visit and why and ultimately research and plan a holiday to France.

Learning directional, transport and town vocabulary together with prepositional phrases, the children describe their journey to school, plan a trip to France and become tourist guides, giving reasoned opinions on which places in town to visit;  finally the children create a tourist leaflet, in French, for their own local area.