Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) and Latin
French
Children at Arbourthorne Community Primary School have an interest in and awareness of foreign languages and cultures, often as a result of different home languages and backgrounds and because of the excellent teaching they receive from our MfL teacher. We make the most of children's interests in languages by providing the opportunity for all children to learn French from Y3 and have a designated teacher, Madame Griggs, who offers excellent opportunities for children in KS1 and in KS2. We ensure a broad balance of the key skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. This enables our children to become confident communicators and decoders and prepares them for their secondary experience. They see themselves as part of a wider global community in which they can communicate with others. It teaches children to be inquisitive about how others live.
Children enjoy the challenge of acquiring foreign language skills and respond particularly well to interactive activities such as role play, songs and stories. Our approach encourages children to be excited about language learning, confident to have a go and able to build on their knowledge of how language works. We deepen children’s knowledge of the world by providing them with authentic stimuli and experiences. For example children might take part in cheese tasting sessions or make rosettes to mark Bastille day.
Learning a language makes a valuable contribution to both their literacy levels and their cultural understanding. Children in language lessons are immersed in their learning, show pride in their work and enjoy sharing their work with the wider community.
The gallery of photographs includes: includes
- celebrating world book day in French
- Learning how to express opinions when testing French cheeses!
- French through art- rehearsing colour and fruit words as we explore a French painting technique with Jayne Cooper Artist in Residence
- Enjoying a French story
Latin
Madame Griggs also teaches Latin to pupils in Y5 and Y6 which helps to support learners in understanding the foundations of our language system and supports reading comprehension skills and word origin. As a school, we recognise the many benefits of learning Latin, not least developing children’s thinking skills, discovering links with English words, widening and enriching our own vocabulary and also recognising how crucial an understanding of Latin is for many future careers including science, medicine and law. .
Typically children in Latin lessons take part in Latin role play, enjoy a range of drama techniques including hotseating, will listen to and analyse Greek myths, complete craft projects and will develop their understanding of some of the rules underpinning the Latin language. Our children are challenged towards higher level thinking and relish the opportunity to develop their linguistic skills with Magistra Griggs in a small group context.
Children have enjoyed the opportunity to visit The British Museum with Sheffield Girls' High and take a residential visit to Vindolanda and the Roman Army museum and Fort where children have seen history at first hand and the famous writing tablets which are the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain.
We have strong links with the Classics department at Sheffield Girls’ School, Classics for All and the Classics department at the University of Leeds. We are very proud to be one of only a handful of state primaries to offer Latin to our children.
ad vitam paramus...
We are preparing for life!
The pictures show children enjoying finding out about a visit from the doctor in Roman times. Children are proudly showing off the Latin script they produced via role play. They worked out that our word 'script' comes from Latin ! Scribo- I write.
The children also made their own Pandora's box having learnt the Greek Myth.
