Mrs TurnerHead of MFL
The Modern Foreign Languages Department consists of four specialist teachers.
The department is led by Claire Turner, who has been teaching at The Wilnecote School since 2013. Having studied BA(Hons) German at the University of Leeds and having the amazing opportunity to live in Dresden, Germany for a year, she has developed a real passion for the German language and culture! Whilst at university, she continued her French studies to maintain a good level of the language.
The deputy head of department is Marianne O’Connor. Marianne joined Wilnecote in 2016 and is a specialist in both French and German.
We also have two further German and French specialists in our department: Kay Hill and Marg Whiffin. Marg has been teaching at The Wilnecote School since 2000. She completed her degree in German with French at the University of Warwick and thoroughly enjoyed her year abroad in Kiel, Germany. Kay joined The Wilnecote School as an NQT in 2008 after having graduated from Keele University with a degree in French and German. Kay had a wonderful time in both Limoges, France and Graz, Austria.
The MFL department consists of very experienced and incredibly passionate teachers. We believe that learning a language opens the door to numerous possibilities and aspire to share our passion with our students. We regularly review our curriculum ensuring that we are providing accessible yet challenging schemes of work to our students in preparation for life after school.
Vision for MFL at The Wilnecote School
Our aim is to encourage students to develop a bigger curiosity of the world we live in and to explore new language and cultures. We have built our curriculum in line with the National Curriculum to enable students to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. We deliver topics that provide the opportunity to deepen students’ knowledge of foreign history, literature, culture and traditions as well as equipping students to study and work in other countries.
By continuously building on key language skills throughout Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4, students are able to demonstrate an understanding of French or German and respond both verbally and in written form. Students speak with increasing confidence and write at varying length whilst simultaneously using the variety of grammatical structures they have learnt.
The curriculum has been designed so that high frequency vocabulary and grammatical structures can be revisited and built upon over time. Topics are sequenced to allow students to develop their subject knowledge whilst being presented with appropriately challenging grammatical aspects. Our topic sequence also allows for subject knowledge to be revisited for example: in year 7, students study ‘C’est moi’ where they learn vocabulary for family members, students will then also look at family members in the topic of ‘Anne Frank’ in year 8 whilst incorporating the imperfect tense into their work. This will also prepare students for the topic of ‘Family and Relationships’ found in Theme 1 of the AQA GCSE course.
Students complete focussed assessments in each unit. These focus assessments are measured against our incredible progress steps at KS3 and genius progress steps at KS4. Our incredible steps and genius steps help us to frequently measure progress over time and focus on the four key skills needed for language learning.
As of September 2024, students in year 7 will study both French and German. Towards the end of year 7, students will express their preferred language to study in year 8. We will aim to ensure all students are placed in the class of their language choice but we cannot guarantee this. Students will continue studying one language in year 8 and year 9 in greater depth.
Our KS4 scheme of work is based on the guidance suggested by the AQA exam board. We find that this supports vocabulary recall and offers numerous opportunities to revisit ‘genius’ structures.
Extra-Curricular
Students have the chance to fully immerse themselves in the German and French culture through our foreign trips. We have been running an extremely successful German Exchange Programme with colleagues and students from Städtisches Gymnasium Bad Laasphe for over 35 years and we run a trip to Paris allowing students to utilise their language skills, visit famous attractions and try French cuisine, of course! You can see a glimpse of the incredible experience previous students had on our YouTube Channel.
This year Mrs Whiffin will be taking a group of keen GCSE linguists to University of Warwick to explore the various aspects of studying languages at university.