Jazz singer Billie Holiday’s 1939 recording of “Strange Fruit” has become one of the most potent protest songs in U.S. history. Its images of lynched African Americans accompanied the civil-rights movement but still evoke uncomfortable truths today. The song was written by a Jewish Communist high-school teacher, Abel Meeropol. It was originally a poem, written … Continue reading ““Strange Fruit”: a Searing Protest Song”
Dickens’ classic, David Copperfield, is given new life in this movie by Armando Ianucci. Beyond the slightly reinvented plot itself, we are given to experience a new way of telling stories, as boundaries between reality and fiction are blurred if not crossed. What’s more, this brand-new funny version features colour-blind casting and leads us to … Continue reading “David Copperfield”
If you are teaching LLCER Anglais, monde contemporain next year, you should be receiving your specimen copy of Shine Bright AMC right around now. And to find out more, you can watch the replay of the 12 May webinar where two of the authors presented the book. Thank you to the many teachers who participated! … Continue reading “Meet the Authors: Shine Bright AMC Webinar”
Your students seem particularly inspired by the final task in a sequence from Shine Bright Terminale: File 4 Masters and Servants: writing a diary entry for one of the household of an aristocratic British home. This is the second set of entries we’re publishing. In this sequence, in Axe 2 Private Space and Public Space, … Continue reading “Your Students Have More Talent: Masters and Servants”
Two more Reading Guides for LLCER Terminale are available: Paul Auster’s novel Moon Palace and Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman. Our Reading Guide collection helps you and your students get the most out of their set books with background information, extensive extracts and guided activities to help them understand and analyse the works. … Continue reading “New Reading Guides”
In our series of author videos presenting different chapters of Shine Bright AMC, here is File 5 Black Lives Matter, presented by its authors Lynda Itouchène and Laura Pires. This file fits into the Première theme Représentations Axe 1 Faire entendre sa voix : représentation et participation. You can browse this file and all the … Continue reading “Shine Bright AMC File 5 Black Lives Matter”
No, it isn’t fake news: Covid permitting, there will be an exhibition on Fake News running from 27 May 2021 to January 2022 at the Fondation EDF in Paris. Designed for school groups as well as the general public, it will be a great opportunity to have your pupils develop their critical-thinking skills. The exhibition … Continue reading “Fake News Exhibition”
News of the World is a not-so-classic Western starring Tom Hanks as a newsreader travelling across the U.S. during a violent and tumultuous period after the American Civil War. In a neat inversion of Indian abduction narratives like John Ford’s classic The Searchers, the Confederate veteran here is trying to return a child to her … Continue reading “News of the West”
If you’re teaching LLCER AMC, or will be next year, let us introduce the latest addition to the Shine Bright collection: Anglais, monde contemporain Cycle Terminal. It includes 28 chapters of varying lengths covering all the themes of the curriculum in 1e and Terminale, ranging across the English-speaking world. A group of authors teaching in … Continue reading “Coming Very Soon: Shine Bright AMC”
News of the World has many features of a Western but its hero has much more psychological depth than Western heroes of old. The film takes its title from the main character’s job. Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd is a Civil War veteran who now makes his living by travelling from one small frontier town to … Continue reading “Searching for Answers in the West”