KS2 French tutors

In England, Key Stage 2 covers Years 3–6, normally ages 7–11. The national curriculum’s languages programme allows a modern or ancient foreign language; French is one choice. Local-authority-maintained schools must follow the national curriculum, while academies and private schools need not.

For French, the programme brings together listening, speaking, reading and writing. Children work towards understanding familiar speech, asking and answering questions, reading simple writing and changing remembered phrases to make new sentences. Basic grammar includes patterns such as verb forms and masculine and feminine nouns. Songs, rhymes and stories also connect sound, spelling and meaning.

These are aims across the key stage, rather than a nationally fixed French topic list for each year. A Year 3 beginner and a Year 6 learner may need different starting tasks.

For a child who knows some animal words, try this sentence-building example. Imagine they write “J’ai un noir chien”, intending to say “I have a black dog”.

In this description, noir (“black”) follows chien (“dog”). Moving the colour gives “J’ai un chien noir” — “I have a black dog”. The child can underline the animal word and the colour to see what moved.

Now give them une vache (“a cow”) and ask for the black-cow version. The answer is “J’ai une vache noire” — “I have a black cow”. Vache is a feminine noun, so it takes une (“a”) and the feminine spelling noire (“black”); chien is masculine and takes un and noir. Here, the extra e makes the colour agree with the noun.

The useful next check is whether the child can explain the word order and spelling change. These examples show two patterns to practise, without asking a beginner to learn every adjective rule at once.