From September 2026, pupils at St Mary’s have been studying French.

We use the Language Angels scheme where the learning is organised by the level of linguistic knowledge and competency rather than by age. 

Language Angels is made up of five levels:

• Starting Off

• Moving On 

• Early Language 

• Intermediate 

• Progressive 

Early Language units are aimed at classes that are just starting out on their language learning journey. However, they are not reliant on the Starting Off and Moving On units having been taught first. The lessons work mostly on vocabulary, on single nouns (with article/determiner), building up memory skills and formulating very short simple sentences by the end of a unit from memory. 

Intermediate units build on Early Learning and work at phrase level. More grammar is incorporated into the lessons and it starts to be more explicit in the terminology and explanations. There are longer reading and listening exercises and more is expected in terms of pupils’ oral responses and written work. 

Progressive units are the most challenging. The lessons contain more content and the pace is faster as there is more language presented to the children. These units encourage the children to produce written paragraphs and speak more fluently and accurately from memory. The learning also involves recalling and recycling the language learnt in the previous stages. 

It is recommended that schools aim to reach Progressive units by the end of primary phase when there has been a minimum of four years sustained and regular foreign language teaching. However, the Language Angels programme is flexible and offers multiple learning pathways so schools can tailor this scheme to meet the needs of their pupils. 

As at St Mary’s we are using Language Angels for the first time, where there hasn’t been sustained teaching and learning in this foreign language, it is not recommended for older Key Stage 2 pupils to start with Progressive units. It is suggested instead to introduce an accelerated programme, carefully putting together Early Learning and Intermediate units and maybe a Progressive unit by the end of the school year.

Language Angels also offers a very wide choice of Cross Curricular units that are very popular and are mostly of Intermediate or Progressive level. They are intended to be more creative and tie into topics the children may already be covering in class. 

Each unit is aimed to last half a term and has six fully resourced lessons. Week six will always be a revision lesson and an opportunity for assessment. We aim to complete six units in a year. 

There are also a wide selection of cultural lessons where the learning celebrates key traditions and feast days associated with the countries where the foreign language is spoken. 

Curriculum Overview

HWT FRENCH              FRENCH INTENT    FRENCH PROGRESSION