How knowledge deepens from Year 3 to Year 6

Our MFL progression ensures that children build secure, age-appropriate linguistic knowledge through a clear and systematic sequence. This progression reflects the expectations and skills described within our Cave Languages curriculum, our two-year learning cycles, and our MFL Action Plan, which emphasises the importance of phonics, sentence building, dictionary skills, cultural understanding, and grammar manipulation as pupils move through KS2.

The skills below develop cumulatively. By the end of Year 6, pupils are able to understand, speak, read and write in French with increasing sophistication and confidence.

Listening & Speaking Progression

Year 3 (Lower KS2 – Fox Class starting point)

• Recognise and reproduce core French sounds and simple letter–sound correspondences.
• Join in with songs, rhymes and familiar stories.
• Respond to basic instructions and questions (e.g., name, age, colour).
• Ask simple questions using familiar patterns.

Year 4

• Understand short phrases spoken slowly and clearly.
• Begin to hold simple conversational exchanges.
• Use familiar vocabulary to form short spoken sentences with support.
• Develop pronunciation through repeated practice and phonics activities.

Year 5 (Upper KS2 – Owl Class entry point)

• Understand longer spoken sentences and respond with increasing accuracy.
• Produce sentences using correct pronunciation of key letter strings.
• Ask and answer a wider range of questions (opinions, descriptions).
• Present simple information orally (poems, descriptions).

Year 6

• Understand and respond to short spoken passages.
• Speak with growing fluency, accuracy and confidence.
• Manipulate familiar language to produce extended oral answers.
• Use appropriate intonation and expression when presenting to an audience.

Reading Progression

Year 3

• Recognise simple written vocabulary (colours, animals, classroom objects).
• Match written words to spoken vocabulary.
• Begin to decode words using basic letter–sound knowledge.

Year 4

• Read slowly and confidently with increased accuracy.
• Understand short written sentences in familiar contexts.
• Identify familiar noun–adjective combinations.
• Begin using bilingual dictionaries with support.

Year 5

• Read short paragraphs and extract key information.
• Recognise patterns, cognates and familiar structures.
• Use a bilingual dictionary independently to check meaning.
• Follow simple written stories or poems.

Year 6

• Confidently read aloud with accurate pronunciation.
• Understand more complex texts linked to Cave Languages projects (shape books, colour poems, fact files).
• Use dictionary and word-lists to infer and decode unfamiliar vocabulary.

Writing Progression

Year 3

• Copy and write simple words and short phrases.
• Build basic sentences using nouns, adjectives and connectives ("and").
• Write labels, simple lists or captions.

Year 4

• Write simple sentences from memory.
• Use basic negatives (e.g., ce n’est pas).
• Build short descriptive sentences using learnt structures.
• Spell familiar words using sound–letter awareness.

Year 5

• Write extended sentences using familiar grammar (verbs, adjectives).
• Use plural nouns and articles with increasing accuracy.
• Produce short passages for purpose (poems, descriptions).
• Apply dictionary skills for accuracy.

Year 6

• Construct complex sentences using varied grammatical structures.
• Use regular and irregular verbs appropriately.
• Produce extended written outcomes (mini-books, fact files, poems).
• Redraft and improve accuracy using dictionaries and teacher feedback.

Grammar Progression

Year 3

• Understand gender of nouns (masculine/feminine).
• Learn to use simple adjectives and position rules.
• Recognise singular/plural forms.
• Begin to apply negatives.

Year 4

• Strengthen use of definite and indefinite articles.
• Apply adjective agreement in number and gender.
• Use simple present tense structures (it is / it is not).

Year 5

• Manipulate regular -er verbs (1st and 2nd person).
• Apply partitive articles in context (food, preferences).
• Use conjunctions to extend sentences.
• Secure adjective agreement in more complex examples.

Year 6

• Use a range of verbs: regular, irregular, singular and plural.
• Apply negative structures accurately.
• Use prepositions, possessives and expanded noun phrases.
• Understand and manipulate grammatical structures within extended writing.

Phonics Progression

Year 3

• Introduction to key French phonemes (e.g., ou, on, an, in, eau).
• Recognise and produce simple sound–letter patterns.
• Join in with songs and rhymes to embed phonics.

Year 4

• Continue phonetic development through Cave Languages listening tasks.
• Pronounce familiar vocabulary more accurately.
• Identify silent letters and common sound combinations.

Year 5

• Confident use of phonics when decoding written text.
• Increasing accuracy in pronunciation of complex letter strings.
• Apply phonics knowledge in reading unfamiliar words.

Year 6

• Fluent decoding using secure phoneme–grapheme correspondence.
• Confident pronunciation during presentations and extended reading aloud.
• Apply phonics knowledge independently when spelling unknown words.

Why Progression Matters at Aston Rowant

Our progression ensures that:

• Learning builds securely year on year.
• Mixed-age classes receive coherent, not repetitive, teaching.
• Key language structures are embedded through spaced practice.
• Pupils leave KS2 secondary-ready, confident and culturally aware.
• Monitoring (book looks, pupil voice, lesson visits) aligns with expectations in our Action Plan.