Primary French Scheme of Work from Year 2 to Year 6

Our Primary French Scheme of Work provides a complete, progressive curriculum designed to help pupils build vocabulary, phonics, grammar and communication skills with increasing confidence and independence from Year 2 to Year 6.

✓ 30 progressive French units from Year 2 to Year 6
✓ Ready-to-teach lessons with audio, songs, worksheets and activities
✓ Structured progression in phonics, grammar, vocabulary and the four skills

Give your pupils a clear language-learning journey that builds year after year.

A Primary French Curriculum Built for Progression

The Gramacri Primary French Scheme of Work provides a carefully sequenced learning journey from pupils’ first structured encounter with French in Year 2 to increasingly confident and independent language use by the end of Year 6.

Rather than treating vocabulary topics as isolated blocks, the curriculum is cumulative. Previously learned vocabulary, phonics and grammatical structures are deliberately revisited, connected and reused across different contexts so that pupils gradually build a transferable knowledge of French.

The programme develops through five progressive stages:

Encounter → Build → Develop → Extend → Apply

Year 2 — Encounter
First encounters, listening, imitation and early combination.

Year 3 — Build
Core vocabulary, phonics awareness and sentence building.

Year 4 — Develop
Systematic phonics, grammar and increasingly structured communication.

Year 5 — Extend
Transfer, manipulation, opinions and longer connected language.

Year 6 — Apply
Independent selection, recombination and purposeful communication.

Our Primary French Curriculum: Year-by-Year Overview

Gramacri’s Primary French Scheme of Work includes 30 carefully sequenced units from Year 2 to Year 6, with six units in each year group. Two units are taught each term, followed by a formal assessment point, creating regular opportunities for retrieval, consolidation and progression across the curriculum.

Year Group	Autumn Term	Spring Term	Summer Term
Year 2	KS1 Unit 1 Let's Start French KS1 Unit 2 First Words in French	KS1 Unit 3 Things Around Me KS1 Unit 4 My Magic World	KS1 Unit 5 Under the Sea KS1 Unit 6 When I Grow Up
Year 3	KS2 Unit 7 Greetings & Feelings KS2 Unit 8 Family Members	KS2 Unit 9 Colours & Numbers KS2 Unit 10 Animals	KS2 Unit 11 Food KS2 Unit 12 Revision & Games
Year 4	KS2 Unit 13 All About Me KS2 Unit 14 French Phonics	KS2 Unit 15 My Body KS2 Unit 16 Clothes & Stories	KS2 Unit 17 Daily Routines KS2 Unit 18 Revision & Games
Year 5	KS2 Unit 19 Likes & Dislikes KS2 Unit 20 My School	KS2 Unit 21 Physical Description KS2 Unit 22 Sports	KS2 Unit 23 Family & Environment KS2 Unit 24 Animals & Biodiversity
Year 6	KS2 Unit 25 Global Issues KS2 Unit 26 Festivals & Celebrations	KS2 Unit 27 The Weather KS2 Unit 28 Getting Around	KS2 Unit 29 Holidays KS2 Unit 30 Around My City

Assessment 1 – Autumn Term

Assessment 2 – Spring Term

Assessment 3 – Summer Term

Year 2 — Encounter

Let’s Start French • First Words in French • Things Around Me • My Magic World • Under the Sea • When I Grow Up

Pupils begin with an oral-first introduction to French through greetings, numbers, simple questions, familiar vocabulary, songs, games, stories and highly visual activities. They start combining familiar words into simple phrases and sentences while building confidence in listening and pronunciation.

Year 3 — Build

Greetings & Feelings • Family Members • Colours & Numbers • Animals • Food • Revision & Games

Pupils strengthen core language foundations through familiar topics while developing more explicit awareness of French phonics and grammatical patterns. They begin asking and answering questions, forming complete sentences and expressing simple opinions.

Year 4 — Develop

All About Me • French Phonics • My Body • Clothes & Stories • Daily Routines • Revision & Games

Year 4 marks a move towards more systematic application. Pupils develop explicit French phonics, use increasingly secure grammatical structures and begin combining time expressions, connectives and descriptive language in longer spoken and written responses.

Year 5 — Extend

Likes & Dislikes • My School • Physical Description • Sports • Family & Environment • Animals & Biodiversity

Pupils increasingly retrieve and transfer previous learning across contexts. They justify opinions, manipulate familiar grammar, develop present-tense verb knowledge and construct longer responses with reduced scaffolding.

Year 6 — Apply

Global Issues • Festivals & Celebrations • The Weather • Getting Around • Holidays • Around My City

By Year 6, pupils increasingly select and recombine accumulated French for purposeful communication. Familiar phonics, vocabulary and grammatical systems are applied across cultural, environmental, travel and everyday contexts in preparation for continued language learning at secondary school.

French Phonics Develops Across the Curriculum

French phonics is not treated as a one-off activity.
Pupils begin by listening carefully, imitating pronunciation and building sound memory. They then develop selected sound–spelling correspondences before moving into systematic phonics teaching and increasingly independent decoding.
By Year 4, French phonics becomes an explicit curriculum strand. Pupils explore accents, French vowels and common vowel combinations, silent letters, liaison and consonant patterns before applying this knowledge to connected texts and stories.
In Years 5 and 6, pupils transfer accumulated phonics knowledge to less familiar vocabulary, reading and pronunciation with progressively less reliance on immediate teacher modelling.

Grammar Is Taught Through Meaningful French

Grammar develops progressively through language pupils are already using, rather than as a disconnected set of rules.
Pupils first encounter recurring chunks and simple patterns before progressively developing control of gender and number, articles, possessives, prepositions, adjectival agreement, negation, connectives, grammatical person, infinitives and present-tense verb systems.
Later in the programme, familiar regular and high-frequency irregular patterns are retrieved, compared and manipulated across new contexts.

Year 3
Simple sentence patterns, gender/articles, possession and negatives.

Year 4
Agreement, prepositions, connectives and increasingly structured sentences.

Year 5–6
Infinitives, person, present-tense verb systems, transfer and grammatical manipulation.

Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing Grow Together

The Gramacri French curriculum develops all four language skills progressively.
Pupils move from recognising and reproducing familiar French to understanding connected language, asking and answering questions, reading with phonics support, manipulating familiar structures and producing increasingly connected spoken and written responses.

Listening

Pupils progress from recognising familiar words and chunks to extracting gist and detail from connected spoken French.

Speaking

Speaking develops from short rehearsed responses towards increasingly sustained exchanges and presentations.

Reading

Written French progresses from familiar words to increasingly connected texts supported by phonics and decoding strategies.

Writing

Pupils move from copying and adapting familiar language towards increasingly independent connected writing.

Retrieval Is Built Into Every Stage

French does not disappear when a topic ends.
Previously learned vocabulary, phonics and grammatical structures return across later lessons, units and year groups. Pupils increasingly retrieve language after longer intervals, connect knowledge from different topics and apply familiar structures to new communicative purposes.
Songs, games, questioning, sentence building, translation, stories, reading and listening activities provide repeated opportunities to recall language before extending, transforming or applying it.

Gramacri French festivals, cultural celebrations, the Eiffel Tower and French traditions for primary school pupils.

Gramacri resource illustrating French cuisine, traditional dishes and food vocabulary through an engaging visual learning activity.

Gramacri sports topic featuring an illustrated tennis player to support French sports vocabulary and language retrieval.

Gramacri biodiversity resource illustrating a natural ecosystem with plants, water and wildlife to support environmental vocabulary.

Gramacri Primary French lesson resource showing forest habitats, wildlife and natural environments for learning animal and habitat vocabulary in French.

Gramacri Primary French grammar resource illustrating a teacher explaining the present tense and French verb conjugation in the classroom.

Songs That Help Language Stick

Songs and rhythm provide memorable opportunities to revisit pronunciation, vocabulary and recurring language patterns.

Ready-to-Teach French Resources for Real Classrooms

Every unit is designed to reduce preparation while giving teachers the resources needed to deliver structured French lessons with confidence.
Depending on the lesson and unit, teachers can access structured lesson presentations, embedded audio, English translations, worksheets, vocabulary support, differentiated activities, stories, games, songs and answer guidance.

Structured Lesson Presentations
Clear lesson sequence and learning activities.

Audio & Pronunciation Support
Embedded modelling helps teachers and pupils hear French accurately.

Songs, Stories & Games
Language is encountered through varied and memorable contexts.

Worksheets & Differentiated Activities
Different levels of support and challenge while pupils work towards shared curriculum outcomes.

English Teacher Support
Translations, guidance and answers reduce uncertainty for non-specialists.

Ready-to-Use Resources
Less searching and preparation. More time for teaching.

Designed for Non-Specialist and Specialist Teachers

You do not need to create a French curriculum from scratch.
The sequence, language progression and resources are already organised, while embedded audio, English translations, visual support, modelling and answers help non-specialist teachers deliver lessons confidently.
Specialist teachers can use the same progression while extending interaction, pronunciation, grammar and independent language use according to the needs of their classes.

Adaptive Teaching Without Lowering Expectations

The same ambitious French curriculum remains available to all pupils, while the level of scaffolding and support can be adapted.
Visual prompts, vocabulary banks, audio modelling, sentence builders, written models, colour coding, repetition, matching, games and structured interaction provide different routes into the same learning.
Where differentiated pathways are used, they vary the amount of support, choice and independence required rather than placing pupils on permanently separate curriculum tracks.

Assessment Shows What Pupils Can Retrieve and Apply

Assessment is integrated into the French curriculum rather than added at the end.
Formative evidence is gathered continuously through listening, speaking, phonics checks, questioning, reading, sentence building, translation, grammatical manipulation, games and written work.
Three formal assessment points are positioned across each academic year after each two-unit block. As pupils progress, assessment increasingly checks whether they can retrieve, transfer and apply vocabulary, phonics and grammar — not simply remember isolated words.

French Culture, the Francophone World and Global Learning

Language learning is connected to the cultures and communities that use French.
Across the curriculum, pupils encounter France and the wider Francophone world through places, traditions, celebrations, food, everyday life and cultural contexts.
As pupils become more linguistically independent, French is also used to explore environmental themes, biodiversity, sustainability and global issues.

Festivals & Celebrations
Pupils explore French-speaking culture through key celebrations and traditions such as Bastille Day, Carnival and La Fête de la Musique, while developing cultural awareness and topic-based vocabulary.

Food
French food and sustainable choices, including typical dishes and everyday vocabulary linked to French cuisine, healthy eating and food preferences.

My School
Comparisons between English and French school life, helping pupils notice similarities and differences in routines, subjects and school culture.

French Around the World
Pupils discover where French is spoken around the world through maps, flags, capitals, games and visual resources, building geographical knowledge alongside language learning.

Family & Environment
Language applied to sustainability, encouraging pupils to talk about family life, the environment and ways to care for the world around them.

Animals & Biodiversity
French used to discuss environmental contexts, including habitats, wildlife and biodiversity through meaningful cross-curricular learning.

Global Issues
Year 6 pupils meet language related to deforestation, pollution, climate change and other global challenges, using French to explore important real-world themes.

From First French Words to Secondary Readiness

The objective is not simply to complete 30 topics.
By the end of Year 6, pupils are expected to draw increasingly independently on accumulated phonics, vocabulary, grammar and language-learning strategies.
They should be able to retrieve language after delay, decode increasingly unfamiliar words, understand connected French, manipulate familiar grammar and combine known language for purposeful spoken and written communication.
The result is a stronger linguistic foundation for the transition into secondary MFL.

Teach French. Not Planning. Not Searching. Just Teaching.

Give your school a complete Primary French Scheme of Work with structured progression, ready-to-teach lessons and the resources teachers need from Year 2 to Year 6.
Explore the Gramacri French programme and see how structured curriculum design can make Primary French easier to teach and more meaningful to learn.

Simple Pricing for the Whole School

Choose the option that works best for your school. One annual subscription gives your whole school access to the selected curriculum and resources.

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Ready-to-teach lessons and resources
Phonics, grammar, vocabulary and assessment
Audio, songs, worksheets and engaging activities
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Primary French Scheme of Work FAQs

Is Gramacri a complete Primary French Scheme of Work?

The Gramacri French programme contains 30 progressive units from Year 2 to Year 6, alongside structured progression in phonics, vocabulary, grammar, listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Are both KS1 and KS2 included?

Both Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 are included. Gramacri’s French curriculum currently starts in Year 2 and continues through to Year 6, covering both Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. Year 2 gives pupils an engaging early introduction to French, while Years 3–6 build progressively through phonics, vocabulary, grammar and the four language skills. Six additional Year 1 units are also coming soon.

Can Gramacri French resources be used at KS3?

Many of the resources can also be used effectively at Key Stage 3, although the Gramacri French Scheme of Work is designed primarily for primary schools. The programme includes French phonics, vocabulary, sentence structures, opinion language, regular and irregular verbs, present-tense grammar, reading, writing, listening, speaking and cultural content that also feature within early secondary French. These resources can be particularly useful for consolidation, retrieval, intervention, transition from KS2 to KS3 or classes with different starting points.

Can non-specialist teachers use the French programme?

Non-specialist teachers are fully supported through audio modelling, English translations, visual resources, activities and answer guidance to help teachers deliver French confidently.

Can I try both French and Spanish during the free trial?

The standard free trial is activated for one language at a time. If you would also like to explore the other language, simply contact us and we can provide access on request so that you can compare both the French and Spanish programmes before deciding which option is right for your school.

Is French phonics included?

French phonics is embedded progressively across the programme and becomes an explicit systematic focus in Year 4 before being transferred to increasingly unfamiliar language in later years.

Does the scheme include assessment?

Assessment is embedded throughout the programme, with formative assessment in lessons and three formal assessment points each year.

Are listening, speaking, reading and writing all included?

All four skills develop progressively across the programme alongside phonics, vocabulary and grammar.

Does the curriculum include French culture?

Yes. Pupils encounter France, the Francophone world, traditions, celebrations, everyday life and wider global contexts throughout the curriculum.

How much does the Gramacri Primary French Platform cost?

The French whole-school subscription costs £150 per year and provides access to the French curriculum and associated teaching resources for 12 months.