Dragons loom large in a lot of children’s literature, from Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter, as well as How To Train Your Dragon and Eragon. The theme of dragons sparked the imagination of thousands of British children, who created designs for giant dragon sculptures on view in London’s Kew Gardens this summer. There … Continue reading “To Find a Dragon”
Mary Cassatt was doubly unusual within the school of Impressionism: as a woman and an American. An exhibition in Paris puts the spotlight on this lesser-known member of Degas’ school, and free class visits are available in English. Cassatt was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1844, into a family that had made a fortune in … Continue reading “Mary Cassatt: An American Impressionist”
The exhibition POP ART: Icons That Matter at the Musée Maillol has excellent teaching resources to explore a key movement in 20th century U.S. culture. The exhibition features works from the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. The Musée Maillol’s teaching page lets you download a detailed teaching pack. … Continue reading “Pop Art: Teaching Resources”
Until January 21st, 2018, the American Pop Art movement has taken up residence in the Musée Maillol in Paris. For the first time in France, you can see more than sixty works from the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. This is a rare opportunity to discover key pieces of the … Continue reading “POP ART – Icons That Matter”
The Irving Penn exhibition opening at Paris’s Grand Palais was shown in New York’s Metropolitan Museum this spring. The Met’s site has interesting videos and audio guides in English made to accompany the exhibition and which are useful teaching tools. The Grand Palais site has a teaching pack you can download giving you background information … Continue reading “Teaching with Irving Penn’s Photography”
The annual European Day of Languages on 26 September is a great reason to have some multilingual mingling and celebrations in your classroom! And for an instant teaching activity on comparing languages, why not get your pupils to participate in the competition to design a T-shirt for the 2018 event? Or participate in a world … Continue reading “Celebrate European Languages”
The David Hockney exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris from 21 June to 23 October is a retrospective of the British pop artist’s work. Who better to acquaint your pupils with Hockney’s painting than the man himself in this excellent short video. Warning: There is a brief image of a naked man diving into … Continue reading “David Hockney Video”
The David Hockney exhibition that broke attendance records at the Tate Britain arrives as the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In London, almost half a million people saw the retrospective of Britain’s most famous pop artist, from his California swimming pool paintings to recent monumental landscapes and iPad art. Hockney was born in Yorkshire in 1937, … Continue reading “David Hockney: The Pompidou Goes Pop”
These videos of crazy contraptions inspired by Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson’s drawings are a great addition to a project to make a machine. They allow you to show pupils some examples, practise describing the machines, and see models of how to present a machine. No commentary on this video, just the images of the … Continue reading “Rube Goldberg Machine Videos”
Let’s imagine a crazy machine! We look at a fun and active project that gets pupils moving and talking in English about a culturally specific phenomenon: a Rube Goldberg machine. Cartoonist Rube Goldberg was famous for drawing comically complex machines to complete everyday task. His drawings are so well known in the U.S.A. that there … Continue reading “Inventing a Machine in Language Class”