In Years 3 to 6, with two lessons each week, the children expand upon the skills they learnt in Pre-Prep (Listening, Reading, Speaking, and Writing). Whilst maintaining the fun of the subject, they begin to establish a soundly structured framework of elementary grammar and practice transferable language learning skills. They are taught in a variety of ways including the use of audio-visual methods such as songs, vocabulary games online and traditional teaching methods.
Outside the classroom, there are special events in each year group to promote enthusiasm for the language as well as intercultural understanding:
Year 3: French Breakfast
Year 4: French Assembly
Year 5: French poems recital to focus on accent and intonation
Year 6: watch a French Play
Year 3 – greetings and simple questions and answers, nationality and the concept of masculine/feminine words, definite articles, colours, animals.
Year 4 – days of the week, months, numbers to 31, activities, clothes, means of transport, daily routine and hobbies (complex sentences with opinions), weather.
Year 5 – alphabet and spelling words in French, school subjects and school life, agreement of colours, family.
Year 6 – likes and dislikes, where you live (location, description of house, furniture), French-speaking countries, subject pronouns, conjugation of regular ‘er’ verbs in present tense, places in town.
In the Spring and Summer Terms, during one of their French lessons each week, the Year 6 children are given a taste of Latin. Using the textbook ‘Minimus – starting out in Latin’, pupils are introduced to a real family that lived at Vindolanda (near Hadrian’s Wall) at the beginning of the second century AD. Grammatical concepts are introduced through comic strips and stories. An important aim of the book is to build pupils’ English vocabulary through the Latin roots sections.
