At Coleham School, we aim to provide a high-quality and inclusive language education which engages and inspires children to develop a life-long love of languages. For every child, we want to nurture their enjoyment of learning a foreign language as well as stimulate and encourage children’s curiosity about languages in general. The learning of a Foreign Language provides children with a lifelong skill, as well as being a valuable cultural experience throughout their education. It encourages a broader understanding of the multilingual and multicultural world and introduces an international dimension to pupils’ learning, giving them an insight into their own culture and those of others. Whilst we focus our FL based learning on French, we strive to provide children with the opportunities to experience a range of other languages and celebrate the diversity in our school.
Our Vision
Through foreign languages, our children will:
- foster an interest in learning other languages,
- develop awareness of cultural differences in other countries, broadening their minds and increasing opportunities for foreign travel and communication,
- lay the foundations for future study of languages,
- develop all four skills – speaking, listening, reading and writing,
- enjoy speaking and communicating in French with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity.
Our Progression document
FRENCH Progression 2025-26
At Coleham, children in Key Stage 2 are taught 30 minutes of French every week by Madame Jones, our specialist languages teacher but we aim to expose the younger children in school to French too wherever we can. We strive to make the French language as visual as possible around the school via signage and displays, even our class names are in French!
Meet our Subject Leader
Teacher Madame Jones leads and teaches Modern Foreign Languages across the school and holds a BA (Hons) in French and Spanish.
Celebrating Modern Foreign Languages
We enrich our MFL offer with extra-curricular language clubs, hosting visitors to learn about other countries and cultures and via links with secondary school language departments. Our year 5 children were lucky to have a taster of Latin and German this year by local Year 10 students.
Madame Jones organizes an International Day each year for us to enjoy and we never quite know what to expect. However, you can guarantee it will be jam-packed with music, games, cuisine and special visitors. The whole school community gets involved! This year, she hosted an International Day complete with an International food market after school. Children and adults alike relished the opportunity to sample new international culinary delights!
French trip for Staff
Learning Modern Foreign Languages is not just for the children! We have made significant steps to upskill our staff by sending staff to a Language School in Rouen, France. 20 members of staff went to Europe in the spring of 2022 to help boost their grasp of the French language after we submitted a successful bid for European funding to enable a series of trips to take place.
Ms Jones said: “I am beyond excited, this is a fantastic continuing professional development opportunity for staff. We want to raise the profile of French throughout the entire school and the best way of doing this is by the whole staff team getting involved to make it happen.”
Read the full Shropshire Star article here:
https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/local-hubs/shrewsbury/2022/04/07/bon-voyage-for-school-staff-looking-to-improve-language-skills/