Developing a French scheme of work in Years 3 and 4 for a Prep School

[Louise Galletly]

Hello

I am new to this network and am so impressed by it I want to join in! I have just been appointed Head of MFL in my independent Prep School and one of my tasks over the Summer is to write a scheme of work for Years 3 and 4 for French, for 3 language specialists to use. I have been teaching languages for many years but had my first experience of teaching KS1 and 2 when I joined my current school 7 years ago. It was a steep learning curve and I tackled it on my own, but it's been a success and I have arrived at a fairly clear understanding of what works and what doesn't and I sort of understand why! We teach French from Reception so that, by Year 3, our pupils have already had 3 years of learning. While parents think their child should be fluent at the end of those 3 years, of course it doesn't work like that. In a sense, Year 3 needs to be just more of the same as KS1 but I now need to develop the bridging scheme that builds on the songs, stories and games and launches nicely into Year 5 where they start using a textbook scheme. I just wanted to say thank you for the shared schemes of work on your site because I have found looking at the Framework and QCA Schemes of Work on their own really quite daunting, with the question 'How do you build this into long-, medium- and short-term plans?' buzzing around in my head. The other issue has been what materials to buy in. We have used La Jolie Ronde in the past (and still do in Years 1 and 2) but I am going to invest in Catherine Cheater's Schemes of Work for Ys 3 & 4.  I liked what Jo Rhys-Jones said about it (in a discussion back in 2008 - I realise that I am a little behind here!) and have already built up a fairly good library of authentic materials anyway for KS1. Little Linguist has a fantastic range of materials to buy.

Louise Galletly

[Jo Rhys-Jones]

Hi Louise -  apologies for the late welcome - its been a VERY busy term/start to summer so I hit the relax button and have completely neglected the site recently. I'm changing jobs and have been studying too so am really lookig forward to my new school role in September and being able to edit/update on a more regular basis again!

Let me know how you get on with CC - where are you based by the way? You might find CC3 a little simple for your children as they have already done so much with you, so investigate 4 & 5 possibly? Drop me a private message if you want a chat sometime about it...

Take care

Jo