Intent

Glebelands has chosen to follow CUSP French which has been purposefully built around the principles of evidence-led practice. This is to ensure that there is a focus on high-quality development of children as linguists. Core areas of study are revisited throughout the curriculum. Each unit of study focuses on phonics, grammatical structures, reading, writing, oracy and vocabulary. Fully resourced, CUSP French is both teacher facing and pupil facing, building consistency in how French is taught across the school and ensuring that teachers, including those with no prior knowledge of French, have the subject knowledge required to teach the content.  
Key areas of focus have been deliberately selected to ensure that pupils are equipped with knowledge and language that will serve them in engaging with important and useful topics such as the environment, wellbeing and travel. The curriculum focuses not just on vocabulary acquisition but also on the building blocks of learning a new language.

Implementation

CUSP French is taught from Years 3 – 6 at Glebelands. Each year group has 6 blocks of 5 weeks teaching. Additional weeks in the academic year can be used for consolidation, revisiting or enrichment. The curriculum is built to be delivered in 30 – 40 minutes of study per week. This can be organised as two shorter sessions (e.g. 2 x 15 – 20 minutes) or one longer lesson.

Teachers will note that there is limited emphasis on pupils’ writing of French and a greater focus on reading, oracy and laying strong linguistic foundations. This is because pupils need to hear, see and say whole, correctly spelt words frequently before they are asked to apply these to written tasks. As pupils become more confident with curriculum content, teachers may choose to use the flexible content weeks to further develop pupils’ written French.  

Impact

Children at Glebelands have genuine interest and increasing confidence when working in a foreign language. Lessons allow children to verbally practise with a focus on pronunciation, vocabulary and expression. Written work allows children to demonstrate their growing understanding of using French grammar while using masculine and feminine words. Children are able to show their progression of skills in the following key aspects of study that are explicitly referenced in the National Curriculum for MFL including:  

• vocabulary acquisition  

• varied oracy opportunities, including engagement in conversation  

• phonics and accurate pronunciation  

• grammatical knowledge  

• reading and listening for meaning  

• sentence composition  

• simple writing tasks.  

These are all carefully represented in the CUSP French curriculum.