VISION

At Great Kingshill we believe that every child should have the opportunity to celebrate languages and culture within their homes, class, school and the wider world in which they live. From Pre-school to Year 6 and beyond our dream is to inspire the children to enjoy learning a variety of languages and experience differing ways of communication.

It is our vision that by the time children transition to secondary school, they will be better equipped to make informed choices about the languages they wish to pursue as well as understanding the significance and importance of embracing different cultures in their immediate and future environment.

Understanding cultural and language differences not only facilitates a better understanding of the wider world but it also has learning benefits across the curriculum. Language learning promotes interest in computing, Geography, History, Science, English language as well as analytical brain development. As children’s knowledge grows, their understanding and appreciation of the English language and it’s origins also grows.

Above all, we want the children to have fun learning the wide spectrum of MFL on offer and inspire those future global leaders!

INTENT

We are fortunate at GKCS to have a wide range of language skills at our fingertips, both from within our staffing team to the children and their families. This is something that we will actively explore during special days such as International Mother Tongue Day, European Languages Day and through our day-to-day activities such as doing the register in different languages and special cultural events.

Language is something to be celebrated and our intention is to share this with the children through a variety of mediums such as song, dance, conversation and art.

It is our primary intent to build confidence in the children to ‘have a go’ and not be shy about embracing this wonderful opportunity to expand their communication capabilities. Irrespective of their ability, all children will have access to learning alternative languages and ways of communicating concentrating on verbal, non-verbal and later in KS2 a little writing.

Whilst there is no governmental obligation for the children to learn languages in EYFS and KS1 it is our intent to install this love of learning languages from the moment they start their journey with us at GKCS. At the beginning of their journey where they are learning to communicate in their mother tongue, our intent is to share basic statements, words and expressions using Makaton and/or BSL so whatever their stage of communication or specific individual needs they can communicate effectively with their peers and adults. As they progress on their learning journey, they will learn how to say basic greetings in a variety of languages, learn basic phrases linked with their topics and concentrate on one main language for their weekly language learning which will be either French, Spanish or German.

As well as learning the languages, it is our intent that the children will also learn their relevant geographical reach and associated culture similarities and differences. This can often be combined with other subjects such as Geography, History and Art which also enables children to recognise root language similarities with English. Our approach ensures that languages become an integral part of a child's learning journey.

IMPLEMENTATION 

All teachers, children and parents are able to access the Language Angels (LA) learning platform, which includes free access to ‘Blurbs’ an at home learning app through games. An overview is provided in the table below. 

Teachers are able to access all LA resources, including songs and vocabulary. This can be used as a resource for additional enrichment during specific topics if teaching time allows. Year 2 RE also has an option for children to ‘Learn something new’ and some have opted for languages in past years. This includes resources for the ‘Cultural learning’. 

EYFS and KS1 

The intent is that EYFS and KS1 can access LA to complement and support learning across the specific curriculum as well as use in the Summer term for the Languages Festival. Additional activities such as learning basic greetings, introductions and vocabulary such as ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ in multiple languages can easily be integrated into snapshot learning opportunities such as the register in KS1 and role play in EYFS.  

Although BSL has received official language status, because of the need of existing SEND children to communicate in Makaton, this will continue to be taught. The raise in profile and reach of teaching of BSL should be considered as a replacement 2025/6, especially as children coming through the school with hearing impairments are learning BSL. This should include updating of the school song ‘Cross over the road’ or introducing another.

KS2 

It is intended to better fit the difficulty of language learning to the year group as well as providing children with the opportunity to regularly recap and practice previous topics and vocabulary. Spanish will be taught in Years 3 and 4 with French in Years 5 and 6. In 2025/6 the curriculum for Year 6 will change to French, ensuring 2 years of progressive learning. Each term there is a Spanish recap and children should be encouraged in lessons of French to recall the Spanish equivalents. 

Additional ‘tasters’ of other languages to be used to enrich appropriate topics across the wider curriculum. The additional languages are not to be taught as units but some key vocabulary included at the appropriate point. LA also have topic units which directly relate to the curriculum and can be ‘dipped’ in to extract some additional vocabulary in the core language e.g. Ancient Britain (Stone Age) vocabulary in French/Spanish/Italian.