7 key reasons why specialist language teachers should invest in a Scheme of Work?
Emilie Woodroffe is a Director at PLN, leading a team of specialist language teachers working across 40 primary schools in the North West. A native French speaker with 16 years of experience in primary MFL, she is also the voice and face of PLN’s in-class support programs, Video2Teach and Click2Teach. In this blog series, she shares insights, reflections, and ideas to inspire primary language teaching. Connect with Emilie on Facebook, LinkedIn, and X.
What to look for in a good SOW?
When I talk about a Scheme of Work (SOW), I mean a published resource or online platform that schools can buy into for their foreign language teaching. Teaching primary languages is all about the foundations of language learning, many subjects rely on structured schemes because they are designed by teams of experts and practitioners, saving teachers hours of planning. Think of the popular maths scheme widely used in primary and secondary schools in the UK!
But if you're an MFL teacher—trained, experienced, and knowledgeable—why should you consider using a SOW? Here are seven key reasons:
1️. Reduce workload
Strong curriculum management is crucial for expert teaching, curriculum leaders have so many important roles, and building and maintaining a programme of study that meets the needs of the national curriculum, whilst offering a wide variety of learning opportunities can feel extremely overwhelming.
Teachers should focus their time and energy on teaching key language learning skills rather than planning lessons and creating resources. A well-structured SOW allows for flexibility, enabling teachers to tweak and adapt language lessons to fit their specific context while reducing planning time significantly. A great scheme of work will save you time without compromising on quality!
2️. Designed by experts
A high-quality SOW is created by subject specialists and experienced teachers with up-to-date knowledge. It is designed to make language learning more enjoyable for all, teachers and students alike!
So, consider your scheme, does it include essential documentation such as long-term and medium-term plans, lesson plans, knowledge organisers, phonics/grammar/vocabulary maps, and more? This ensures a clear and logical progression within the subject.
3️. Comprehensive and current curriculum coverage
A strong SOW guarantees that the Programme of Study (PoS) is fully covered, ensuring substantial pupil learning and progression in all four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities).
Subject inspections are rigorous, and we (as experts) want to ensure quality is guaranteed.
Here are some questions to consider whether your scheme is substantial enough:
Are you ensuring students are regularly introduced to unfamiliar sound?
Are you classes making substantial progress, and how sure are you of this?
Are you teaching core vocabulary over a variety of contexts?
Is your scheme of work full of interactive activities built to boost cognitive development?
Does your scheme have firm foundations in grammar progression, accuracy of spelling, attention to phonics, exposure to unfamiliar language?
Does your scheme factor individual differences of disadvantaged pupils and contain progressive units of step by step progression?
Have you considered how you are going to promote life-long language learners?
The education inspection framework (Ofsted) will factor in all of the above questions, along with other elements. Individual school leaders will be responsible for answering all of the above
Built-in progression across year groups provides continuity and structure. The depth of vocabulary knowledge, with the correct level of challenge and age-appropriate topics ensure the highest quality of languages education possible.
Whether you are teaching key stage 1, key stage 2 or early years, your expert curriculum must provide step by step framework and structure that enables solid understanding for all pupils.
When you invest in a scheme of work, the work behind the teaching is done for you and may just require slight adjustments to suit your context, class or pupils.
4️. Native speaker audio recordings
Being an expert teacher, doesn't mean you have to do everything yourself. One of the most valuable features of a good foreign language SOW is the inclusion of authentic native speaker sound recordings. Hearing a different voice—beyond the teacher's—improves listening skills, pronunciation, and overall language comprehension. It makes it real!
Knowledge of phonics is crucial for top quality of education in primary languages in key nouns and sounds. When you reach assessment, you want to ensure you approach to phonics has been thorough to allow students to access a deeper understanding of their knowledge of sound in a new language.
Investing in a structured scheme will consolidate a variety of topics are delivered in phonics at an adequate level for the primary classroom. We want to teach a range of vocabulary with opportunities for pupils to demonstrate phonics and language progression.
5️. Exposure to different voices
Students benefit from hearing different accents and speech patterns. Language trends suggest a good SOW includes a variety of audio and video content that exposes learners to the target language (TL) in diverse contexts. The teaching of languages should embrace different voices and faces, and a language curriculum rich in variety and challenge is essential for language specialists to ensure primary pupils can access languages and ensure language proficiency down the line.
6️. Engaging cultural lessons
Planning and resourcing cultural lessons can be incredibly time-consuming. Even expert teachers with an incredible understanding of curriculum progression will struggle to build a scheme that is substantial enough for primary level teaching.
A high-quality Scheme of Work (SOW) includes ready-made cultural resources, helping students build and develop their curiosity about different cultural differences in a range of contexts, leading to a profound impact on pupils.
These are the memorable lessons that students will remember for years to come. Opportunities for pupils to develop cultural understanding in different units and class topics through the curriculum and in different contexts, will take your expert teaching to a new level. A scheme of work will dave you so much time building resources. Instead you find it within pre made activities, One of my favourite cultural lessons to teach in French is about ‘La galette des rois' in Year 4, and I'm frequently asked about it, even by Year 6 students.
7️. Built-in Assessment
A well-structured SOW integrates both formative and summative assessment, allowing teachers to monitor, track, and report progress throughout the year. Features like Assessment Clouds, Check for Learning, and Puzzle It Out (in our SOW) provide structured opportunities to assess understanding at key points. Less stress, reduced workload, and easy to gather evidence of progress. The assessment we follow is linked to the CEFR – box ticked!
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And now for value added… I’ve got the time to add ‘sparkle’ and be creative! Watch out for my next blog all about adding sparkle to our “At the market” unit.
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A comprehensive scheme of work for the delivery of high quality language lessons throughout the whole school. For each lesson there is a series of engaging activities to do, with the majority of these having online visuals and sound and there is also a useful lesson plan that may be printed.
Jo - PLN Specialist Teacher