St Michael's Academy

At St Michael’s, we believe in generating enthusiasm for early language learning, which we hope will lead to a love of language learning as the children grow older.  We encourage children to understand the relevance of learning a new language and the power of communication.  Our curriculum is exciting and it includes a French Christmas Play, a French breakfast, letters to pen-pals, a fashion show and some high-quality children’s literature.

Language learning is divided into 3 key strands of learning: Phonics, Vocabulary and Grammar. These strands contain the knowledge needed to be able to communicate in a language.  We begin by teaching the children the sounds that they hear in French words so that they can begin to say, read and write words independently. We then teach them how to use the vocabulary and the grammatical structures that are needed in order to form sentences accurately. We revisit the vocabulary that is learnt (and we build on it) several times over the Key Stage in order to help it stick.

Our approach is immersive as much as possible: language is learnt through songs and stories; through repetition and use of actions, which help the children to remember vocabulary and through games, which help the children to consolidate the vocabulary.