French
Modern Foreign Languages at Winsford High Street!
At High Street, we believe that having knowledge of a modern foreign language empowers children in laying foundations for a fabulous start at languages in key stage 3. We choose to focus on the French language, with the heart being practical communication.
We encourage the children to take part in a variety of speaking and listening activities, which they thoroughly enjoy and engage in before any writing takes place. These include:
- Communicating ideas, facts and feelings through drama and role play,
- Speaking in sentences and engaging in simple conversations,
- Focusing on basic phonology and grammatical structures of the language,
- And exploring patterns and sounds of the language through stories, poems, songs and rhymes.
After developing these speaking and listening skills, the children then deepen their learning by writing phrases from memory using French dictionaries and support from their skilled teachers, aiding them in creating new sentences, which express their ideas clearly.
We believe in making French lessons as practical and fun as possible, to enable children to achieve in a great skill for life!
Erasmus Carcassonne Project
To develop teacher subject knowledge, confidence in speaking and teaching French as well as develop cultural knowledge, High Street have been part of an amazing Erasmus funded project for the last 2 years. Due to the interruptions of Covid-19, we have luckily been able to extend our fantastic project into the 2020/2021 academic year.
The project has so far taken 8 of our staff from KS1 and KS2 to Carcassonne in Southern France for 8 days. During their time there, the staff engage in 4 days of French language learning at a language school; this is where subject knowledge is improved, and confidence heightened.
The staff have also spent a day in our link school, L’ecole Leonard Di Vinci, where they deliver a lesson in English for the French children in those classes.
The remaining time is spent completing pedagogy sessions with the course leader Odette Hunt and completing cultural activities where the use of French is highly encouraged.
Our school bear Radcliffe has joined the staff on their travels which has been lovely for the children to see pictures of back at school. Each time a pair of staff members returns, an assembly is delivered to the children about their trip. Here the staff members will cover certain topics in French and share all the fabulous photographs too so the children can really gain an understanding of Carcassonne and how it is similar and different to Winsford.
We hope that our next pair of staff members will be able to jet off to France soon!
Au revoir et merci beaucoup.