MFL Curriculum Statement of Intent
“Those who don’t know foreign languages, know nothing of their own”
Goethe
The MFL Curriculum at Montgomery Academy aims to create successful linguists by challenging students to think, act and speak like the speakers of the languages we teach. We set high expectations and are proud of the outcomes of our students. We are ambitious for all our students and equip them with the knowledge and skills to thrive and succeed; encouraging them and inspiring them with high quality teaching that broadens their awareness of other cultures and providing them with opportunities to participate in a broad range of linguistic, cultural and educational experiences.
All students at Montgomery study French, but we also offer a wide range of additional languages up to GCSE level which include: Spanish; Russian; German; Italian; Persian; Polish; Arabic and Mandarin. We actively encourage students to connect with native speakers and we are the only school in the area that employs a Language Assistant through the British council programme to bring more authenticity to the French classroom and we hold the British Council School International Award.
We strive to enable students to progress onto the next stage of their education and enhance their employability skills with a drive to develop in them high aspirations, resilience and independence to grow as global citizens who can make a positive contribution to society. Consistently high numbers of students progress to KS5 at our local college.
Our curriculum goes far beyond what we teach in lessons, for whilst we want students to achieve the very best examination results possible, we believe that our curriculum goes beyond exams; our aim is to create linguists who thrive in a globalised world. Our Y7 and 8 students benefit from the educational visit to the Christmas Markets in Lille. This opportunity offers students the opportunity to interact with French language speakers in a real life context and experience a different cultural context. Our KS4 students benefit from the educational visit to Paris and learn from a wide variety of linguistic and cultural activities. There is also a wide range of extra-curricular opportunities we offer in school.
Our knowledge-engaged curriculum underpins and enables the application of skills. As a team we carefully plan progression through regular revisiting of content and skills to build on existing knowledge. From the outset we teach grammar, Phonics and vocabulary as the three pillars of language learning; laying down the foundations of language mastery.