Mellis Church of England Primary School - 'To Be Our Best'

Primary Language have been a part of the Mellis Curriculum for a number of years now and KS2 have formal instruction in the French language. KS1 also receive informal instruction in French on an ad hoc basis.

We follow the QCA scheme of work which consists of a progression from basic language such as number, greetings, colours and family, to more advanced areas such as travel, planets, weather and reading stories. Not only do the children take part on games, songs and roleplay, they also work on recording their new found skills through sentence structure, story writing and even teaching each other!

We have a Primary Languages Governor, Gordon Clark, who is actively involved in the schools Languages program. He has helped shape our syllabus and links to other schools as well as contributing to assessment and observations. 

We are very excited to have successfully introduced the new role of French Instructor here at Mellis CE Primary. Mrs Jane Scates, a TA within the School with key language skill sets, is now delivering a hour a week formal French tuition to KS2 (Year 3, 4, 5 and 6). This follows trials with this approach over the two years with Year 4, and latterly Year 5 as well. To ensure that each child gets the appropriate amount of curriculum time across the academic year, Year 3/4 will alternate with Year 5/6 on a half-termly basis.

As part of the School's development of its French Instructor position, our French instructor has visited the local High School to ensure a smooth transition to High School Foreign Languages, and will continue to do so over the next year to review and improve our own provision.

The Suffolk Linguamarque is a new scheme being piloted by Suffolk and is awarded to schools with outstanding practice in Primary Languages.

To achieve the award we are required to show how languages are intregrated into school life, the clear progression between year groups, as well as encouraging pupils to adopt an open approach to other countries and cultures. 

The Primary Languages team are now very pleased to annouced that we have achieved the Bronze Linguamarque, and in the fullness of time are looking to aim to reach Silver.

The Year 6s translated the Hungry Caterpillar into French. Please click here to see it; be warned though, it is a 12 MB word File, so it might take a couple of minutes to download depending on your Internet connection.