Manuels Scolaires Professeurs Documentalistes Lycée - Infos et contenus

Rendez-vous

The Soul of Civil Rights

Aretha Franklin, dubbed “the Queen of Soul”, was one of the most influential musicians in the U.S. charts. She won 18 Grammy awards but also made a massive contribution to the civil rights movement: her songs would become their anthems.

17 Septembre 2018

civil rights

biography

U.S. culture

Sélection culturelle

Happy Birthday Mickey!

Mickey Mouse is going to turn 90 in November 2018 and for his age he still looks pretty active!

12 Septembre 2018

movie

birthday

Mickey

Sélection culturelle

2018 Deauville American Film Festival winners

For this 44th edition the Grand Prize goes to THUNDER ROAD and two Jury Prizes have been awarded to AMERICAN ANIMALS and NIGHT COMES ON.

11 Septembre 2018

film

Cinéma

festival

Rendez-vous

Portrait of Britain

How can you portray a nation of 60 million people? The 100 winning "portraits of Britain" gazing down at passers by in streets, shopping centres, stations and airports across the country are as diverse as the population: different ages, colours, activities, locations, culture and clothing combine to mirror the observers.

11 Septembre 2018

art

British culture

portrait

Sélection culturelle

Festival America

Festival America, the bi-annual event that celebrates the literature of North America, is back for its 9th edition in Vincennes from 20 to 23 September. It offers a weekend where booklovers will be hard-pushed to choose between all the delights on offer. This year, the focus is on Canada , both Anglophone and Francophone. The U.S.A. is well represented of course, as well as authors from Mexico, Haiti and Cuba. There is a special celebration of John Irving, on the fortieth anniversary of the publication of The World According to Garp and homages to two greats: Philip Roth and James Baldwin. There are a whole series of events where two or three of the invited authors have a conversation on a theme. The Canada events consider bilingualism, First Nations, the landscape and environment, politics and myths among others. There is also an alphabet-themed series of more than 60 debates such as A for Adolescence, D for Dystopia or N for New Orleans… The Festival takes over the town of Vincennes with open-air photo and art exhibitions about the Tree Planter movement and the First Nations protests at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline. With 75 invited authors , there is something for everyone. There are no less than four Pulitzer Prize winners, including Jeffrey Eugenides (Middlesex) and Colson Whitehead, who won the 2016 Pulitzer as well as the National Book Award for his wonderful mix of history and whimsy The Underground Railroad , recently translated into French. In it he examines the history of slaves escaping to the non-slave states and Canada with the help of the Underground Railroad. In reality, it was a network of abolitionists and former slaves who helped slaves escape. Whitehead imagines it as a real underground railway line. The Handmaid's Tale author Margaret Atwood, who has long been a supporter of the festival, won't be physically present, but will join a discussion on Saturday by videolink.

07 Septembre 2018

U.S. culture

Canada

Margaret Atwood

5

Ressources
complémentaires

Brexit

This B1-level article will introduce your students to the British political system. They will most probably have heard about Brexit, but will need to understand why the referendum was decided by David Cameron, how British Prime Ministers come to power and what the exit process involves as the negotiations enter their last 6 months.

06 Septembre 2018

Brexit

David Cameron

europe

Brexit Referendum Webpicks

If you would like to work on Britain's referendum on leaving Europe, the following article is a good resource.

02 Septembre 2018

video

Brexit

politics

5

Ressources
complémentaires

The People’s Portrait

This A1 plus-level article deals with a special piece of art in Greater London, linked to the iconic Queen Elizabeth II. The theme will enable pupils to review personal descriptions as well as the preterite and participate to a fun writing contest, coming very soon.

31 Août 2018

art

Queen

British culture

Sélection culturelle

Welcome to Deauville!

A whole range of visions of America and from America will be screened from 31 August to 9 September at the 44th Deauville American Film Festival.

31 Août 2018

film

Cinéma

festival

Sélection culturelle

Spike Lee is Back

Spike Lee's latest film, BlacKkKlansman, is based on the true story of an African-American police officer who managed to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. Incredible as it sounds, Ron Stallworth masterminded an infiltration operation by posing as a white racist on the phone.

30 Août 2018

film

civil rights

Cinéma

Golf 101

One of golf's biggest competitions is coming to France for the first time: the Ryder Cup will take place from 25-30 September. The competition pits the twelve best male golfers in Europe and the U.S.A. against each other every two years. And the Junior Cup is for the 12 best under-18-year-old players from each continent, male or female.

30 Août 2018

sport

U.S.A.

europe

Teaching with BlacKkKlansman

Spike Lee's new film "BlacKkKlansman" is based on the true story of Ron Stallworth, a Colorado Springs policeman who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan. This downloadable audio interview with Stallworth is excellent for listening comprehension.

30 Août 2018

film

civil rights

audio

Rendez-vous

Word of the Moment: Sanctuary Cities

The term "sanctuary city" is used frequently in coverage of immigration issues in the U.S.A. What does it mean and what is the size of the phenomenon?

15 Août 2018

U.S.A.

immigration

U.S. politics

Rendez-vous

Green Coffee

A British university encouraged students to change their consumer habits and help the environment. Winchester University has significantly reduced use of disposable coffee cups by charging for them. And at the same time gave away free re-usable cups to students made partly with recycled chewing gum.

01 Août 2018

video

ecology

ethical consumption

Récapitulons !

Dans notre série de suggestions pour tirer un maximum de bénéfice des documents fournis aux élèves, voici une idée pratique et simple d’activité qui favorise l’implication de tous dans les récapitulations en classe.

01 Août 2018

apprendre à apprendre

recap

révision

Rendez-vous

U.S.A., World Champion of … Quidditch !

The 2018 Soccer World Cup title goes to Les Bleus for the second time, meanwhile, more than 6,000 km away from Moscow, on 2 July, in Florence (Italy), the United States won the Quidditch World Cup.

01 Août 2018

U.S.A.

harry potter

Quidditch

Rendez-vous

Kneeling for His Rights

NFL American football star Colin Kaepernick brought attention to Black Lives Matter's protests about police brutality towards African Americans with his silent protests, kneeling instead of standing when "The Star-Spangled Banner" played before NFL games. Two years on, Kaepernick has been frozen out of the football league but has won two major human-rights awards for his actions, and is now fronting a new Nike advert.

27 Juillet 2018

U.S. politics

protest

American football

Captain Cook: Voyages to the Pacific

250 years ago, Captain James Cook led the first of three expeditions to the Pacific which led to the colonisation of Australia and New Zealand. An exhibition at the British Library looks at the legacy of those expeditions, for Britain but also for the populations in the territories Cook visited. Cook was a Royal Navy Captain skilled in cartography. His first voyage (1768-71) had an ostensibly scientific mission: to observe the transit of Venus in Tahiti in 1769, which would help scientists calculate the distance from the Earth to the Sun. However he had a second mission — to explore the Southern Hemisphere looking for lands ripe for colonisation. European geographers were convinced there had to be a large landmass in the Southern Hemisphere that would balance the land in the northern part of the Globe. They referred to it as Terra Australis, but didn't mean Australia, which had already been partially discovered by Europeans. They believed it would be around the South Pole. The expedition's crew were welcomed in Tahiti, and after making the astronomical observations they had come for, a skilled Polynesian navigator, Tupaia, joined the crew on its onward journey. The expedition didn't encounter a large Southern continent, but the reached New Zealand in October 1769. The country had been sighted by Dutch explorer Abel Tasman more than a century before but there had been no European contact since. Tupaia was able to act as an interpreter as the Maori people were Polynesian, having arrived in New Zealand, or rather Aotearoa as they call it, 700 or 800 years previously. Despite this, the British managed to provoke three violent incidents in 24 hours, leading to several Maori deaths. The expedition then spent several months circumnavigating the South Island and making the first detailed map of New Zealand before setting sail for Australia. Again, the first encounter with Aboriginal people ended with the British firing their muskets. And despite the land being quite clearly inhabited, Cook claimed possession of the entire eastern coast of the continent for Britain, baptising it New South Wales. Seventeen years later, the penal colony of New South Wales would be founded. To the Antarctic Cook's second voyage (1772-75) took him further south, into the Antarctic Circle, still looking for Terra Australis. His ships sailed closer to the Pole than anyone before, but he returned to Britain with no news to report of the mythical continent. He noted in his log book: "I have now done with the SOUTHERN PACIFIC OCEAN, and flatter my self that no one will think that I have left it unexplor’d, or that more could have been done in one voyage towards obtaining that end than has been done in this." The Final Voyage Cook's third expedition to the Pacific (1776-80) would be, in all senses of the word, his last. This time his mission from the Admiralty was try to find the Northwest Passage, a route mariners have believed existed for centuries, allowing a short passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the Arctic, thus avoiding the long journey via the southern point of South America. After various fruitless attempts at finding the Passage, in November 1778, the expedition sailed south for the Hawaiian Islands, which they had been the first Europeans to visit in January that year. In February, 1779, when the two ships of the expedition were anchored off Hawai'i, a boat disappeared from one of the ships. Once again showing cultural insensitivity, Cook took a Hawaiian elder hostage in order to demand the return of the boat. Violence broke out, and Cook, along with several of his men, was killed. Cook's Legacy Cook's three expeditions opened up the Pacific for colonisation. First Australia in 1787, then New Zealand in 1860, though not in exactly the same conditions. The British basically ignored Australia's Aboriginal people and considered the land available for use. They were more circumspect with the Maori in New Zealand, who had a reputation as fearsome warriors, and who had a hierarchical societal structure the British could recognise. The colony of New Zealand was founded based on a peace treaty with Maori tribes signed at Waitangi in 1860, although many of its provisions were later ignored. The three expeditions included botanists, artist and linguists, and brought back information to Europe about plants, animals and societies that were totally unknown. One of the artists on the first expedition, Sydney Parkinson, drew the first depiction of a kangaroo ever seen in Europe. (The name was an approximation of the word he heard used by the Gweagal Aboriginal clan.) Unfortunately, the cavalier spirit of the time meant that the British also took crops and animals with them to develop in the far-flung places they visited. These were meant to provide food for future expeditions, and generally bring sensible European innovations to primitive native people. At best, the crops failed to thrive. At worst, they ravaged existing ecosystems. The Voyages of Captain James Cook British Library, London Till 28 August The British Library is just a few minutes' walk from St Pancras Station if you're taking the Eurostar. Why not pop in? This theme goes well with the section on Aboriginal culture in Speakeasy Files 3e : A Gap Year in the Australian Outback.

27 Juillet 2018

Australia

British history

science

Making Mary Shelley

In the year in which the bicentenary of the publication of Frankenstein is being celebrated, a new biopic of its author, Mary Shelley, turns the spotlight on the young author who has long been eclipsed by a creation which escaped the pages of her book to enter popular culture.

27 Juillet 2018

literature

women

Cinéma

Sélection culturelle

Here We Go Again!

Ten years after the smash-hit original film, Mamma Mia is back with a "prequel and sequel". It's the feel-good movie of the summer. Perfect for an open-air or drive-in showing, with a cocktail in hand, your dancing shoes on and singing voice ready. For a couple of hours, we can all be Dancing Queens (or Kings of course)!

27 Juillet 2018

music

musical

Summer

Dorothea Lange Exhibition: Teacher and Class Visits

The Jeu de Paume museum in Paris is hosting an exhibition of Depression-era photographer Dorothea Lange's work from 16 October to 27 January. (It's a wonderful subject for class work, and we'll be publishing a Ready to Use Resource and a competition for pupils in September. Meantime, you can sign up for a special free teacher's day visit on 6 November. And the Mona Bismarck Center will be offering class visits in English to the exhibition.

27 Juillet 2018

exhibition

documentary

U.S. history

4

Ressources
complémentaires

Audio Interview with the Director of Mary Shelley

A film about Frankenstein author Mary Shelley is being released on 8 August. This B1-B1+ resource allows pupils to explore an interview with Haifaa-Al-Mansour, its director, about Shelley, filmmaking and being the first female Saudi Arabian director.

27 Juillet 2018

literature

women

Cinéma

Rendez-vous

You've Got Ice-Cream Mail

As we bask in the summer heat, our thoughts turn to ice-cream. To eat... or to stick on a postcard! This summer the U.S. Postal Service has launched its first ever "scratch and sniff" stamps to add an olfactory treat to your correspondence. "Scratch and sniff" stickers are popular, so why not transfer the technology to stamps? The recipient can scratch the stamp and get a whiff of watermelon, strawberry or kiwi ice pops. Nothing says summer holidays more than a beach scene postcard and the smell of a vanilla ice. Americans are fond of ice-cream, getting through 8.3 litres per person per year. Not quite the level of the world's ice-cream eating champions, Norway (wh would have guessed), with 9.8 litres, according to research organisation Mintel. There is even a National Ice Cream Day on 15 July. The perfect occasion for the traditional summer-camp refrain: “You scream! I scream! We all scream for ice cream!” Check out some a incredible ice-cream facts from the National Dairy Council.

26 Juillet 2018

U.S. culture

technology

ice cream

Bristol: The Painting is on the Walls

For a weekend in late July, the southern English city of Bristol hosts Europe's biggest street-art festival. The Urban Paint Festival (Upfest) is celebrating its 10th anniversary from 28 to 30 July with a "Simpsons" theme.

19 Juillet 2018

art

British culture

street art

Teaching With Film: Murder on the Orient Express

If you are using our Murder on the Orient Express Resource with your students, this introductory scene from the film is a great way to introduce the characters.

09 Juillet 2018

video

film

Agatha Christie

Sélection culturelle

Winter is Coming... for the Summer

You've watched all seven seasons, and read the books. There's a whole year to wait till the concluding season eight. Never fear, you can check out the Game of Thrones touring exhibition all summer in Paris.

04 Juillet 2018

exhibition

paris

Series

Rendez-vous

Back in Black… Hole

On Friday June 15th, after a memorial service which saw Stephen Hawking’s ashes interred at Westminster Abbey, his “message of peace and hope” was sent to the stars.

04 Juillet 2018

disability

biography

space

Westminster Abbey: Britain's Pantheon

Being buried in Westminster Abbey is the highest honour a British person can be given. And yet, like so many British traditions, it has developed in an organic way, with no real rules or system.

04 Juillet 2018

WWI

London

British history

Emily Brontë 200

Emily Brontë was born 200 years ago on 30 July. She is the most mysterious of the famous Brontë family and little is known about her. What's more, the manuscript of her only novel, Wuthering Heights, has never been found. A bicentenary project invited 12,000 visitors to the Brontë Museum to recreate the manuscript, line by line.

04 Juillet 2018

anniversary

Brontë

Jane Eyre

6

Ressources
complémentaires

Protesting for Change

Get ahead for the new school year! This A2+-level article can be used in parallel with the warm-up activities implemented at the beginning of the school year, as it deals with the Pledge of Allegiance in every school in the U.S.A, as a daily patriotic ritual, as well as recent protests against the national anthem at American football games, in the NFL, schools and universities.

04 Juillet 2018

civil rights

U.S. culture

U.S. politics

Professeurs documentalistes Lycée

The Soul of Civil Rights

Happy Birthday Mickey!

2018 Deauville American Film Festival winners

Portrait of Britain

Festival America

Brexit

Brexit Referendum Webpicks

The People’s Portrait

Welcome to Deauville!

Spike Lee is Back

Golf 101

Teaching with BlacKkKlansman

Word of the Moment: Sanctuary Cities

Green Coffee

Récapitulons !

U.S.A., World Champion of … Quidditch !

Kneeling for His Rights

Captain Cook: Voyages to the Pacific

Making Mary Shelley

Here We Go Again!

Dorothea Lange Exhibition: Teacher and Class Visits

Audio Interview with the Director of Mary Shelley

You've Got Ice-Cream Mail

Bristol: The Painting is on the Walls

Teaching With Film: Murder on the Orient Express

Winter is Coming... for the Summer

Back in Black… Hole

Westminster Abbey: Britain's Pantheon

Emily Brontë 200

Protesting for Change