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With the weather warming up, and the second half of the summer term just around the corner, I’m really looking forward to delivering this brand-new sequence of lessons, which I added to my French scheme for Year 4 when I did some curriculum refreshing last academic year. This is the result of a collaborative planningContinue reading “J’aime les glaces”

First coined by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in the late 1970s and early 1980s, ‘cultural capital’ became a bit of an an educational buzz word – at least for those of us working in England – when it first appeared in Ofsted’s 2019 Inspection Framework. Here, it was outlined in rather broad brush strokes as:Continue reading “Unlocking Cultural Capital”

When I first started working as my school’s specialist languages teacher, with responsibility for teaching across all eight Key Stage Two classes, one of my main aims was to take French from being a “stand-alone” subject to one which was much more cross-curricular. Weaving language-learning into the curriculum alongside other subjects felt important in termsContinue reading “Francophone Art Week”

I love sending time planning and preparing creative and engaging activities and resources to use in my languages classroom, but sometimes we all need a go-to activity, which we know will give us the learning outcome we need with a minimal amount of preparation. All of the activities below work well as starters, as wellContinue reading “Low and No-Prep Language Lesson Activities”

The British Council’s International School Award recognises and celebrates schools that have shown a commitment to embedding international awareness and understanding within their curriculum offer. I first heard about the International School Award several years ago and applying for it had always been on my ‘to-do’ list but it wasn’t until 2019, following a fantasticContinue reading “The International School Award”

Le 14 juillet (Bastille Day in English) commemorates the start of the French Revolution in 1789 and celebrating this historic event is one of my favourite days in the school calendar. At my school, all of Key Stage Two go off timetable for the day and take part in a carousel of activities, both inContinue reading “Le 14 juillet”

In October 2021, the first day back after our half term holiday, we got “the call. ” It wasn’t a shock – like many schools, our inspection was well overdue – but, of course, the nerves started jangling anyway. Languages, in our case French, had already been selected by SLT as a potential Deep DiveContinue reading “A “Deep Dive” into Primary Languages”

European Day of Languages, celebrated every 26th September since 2001, was originally created by the Council of Europe to celebrate the diversity of languages and cultures within the Council’s forty-seven member states, and promote intercultural understanding. At my multilingual, multicultural inner-city primary school, it is a chance to celebrate the many languages spoken by theContinue reading “European Day of Languages”

In the first few years of my career as a primary school teacher, and in spite of having a degree in French and Hispanic studies, I didn’t teach a great many language lessons of my own devising. Between specialist teachers and bought-in schemes of work, I never really had to plan my own lessons. SoContinue reading “Designing an Engaging Scheme of Work for KS2”

Over the past year or so, I’ve been reviewing and revising a lot of the scheme of work that I’ve been developing since I started as the MFL specialist at my current school. The scheme has evolved slowly, over time, but there have always been bits here and there that I’ve felt needed a bitContinue reading “Vive l’heure du goûter !”