At Moorfield, we believe that learning another language not only provides our pupils with essential language skills to communicate with the wider world, but also helps them to develop a curiosity about, and a respect for, other people, places and cultures. Starting in nursery, all pupils learn French every week. In addition to this, pupils in years 4 to 6 learn German, and in year 6 they are even introduced to Russian! Every class is taught by a specialist teacher, and by teaching our pupils more than one language, we provide an excellent grounding for future language learning in their secondary education.
Children in the lower school enjoy learning French through games, songs, actions and stories. They learn basic vocabulary such as colours, numbers and animals, but also start to form sentences and think about grammar in an accessible way.
In the upper school, the children further develop their existing vocabulary and language skills, whilst taking a more structured approach to understanding French grammar. Writing is introduced from year 3, however the lessons retain plenty of songs, rhymes and videos to make French enjoyable and fun!
German is introduced from year 4 to broaden the children's language skills and enable them to draw comparisons across languages. Learning German gives pupils an excellent grounding in grammar and sentence structure, which benefits them not only in the study of foreign languages, but also in English.
Russian is an increasingly important language in business and the wider world. It is a challenging language with a different alphabet to that used in English. At Moorfield, year 6 children are taught to recognise, write and decode the Russian alphabet, along with learning some key phrases. By giving children a taste of such a lesser known language, we hope to inspire them to study a variety of languages in their secondary school careers and beyond.