Our challenge last year was to get 4e students interested in musicals! As we couldn’t take them abroad on an exchange, we felt like taking “a bit of abroad” to them, through musicals. You can read what we planned to do here, and below you’ll find our conclusions about what worked and what didn’t. Though … Continue reading “Assessing musicals with 4e euro”
Black Legends is a musical comedy that traces more than a century of African American music along with landmarks in the civil-rights movement and Black American history. It’s on at Bobino theatre in Paris till 23 March and could make a great class outing. The musical doesn’t have a classic narrative structure, it’s a series … Continue reading “Black Legends”
The This is England short-film festival in Rouen has a specific programme of short films for collège classes covering topics from bullying to helping the community, living in a divorced family to trying to find a way to fit in. If you sign up for a collège showing, your students will see eight films ranging … Continue reading “This is England 2022 collège films”
France’s Fête de la Musique is 40 years old this year, and it has inspired other countries to celebrate music on the longest day of the year, 21 June. Make Music Day, as it’s dubbed in English, made it to New York 15 years ago and has spread across North America, helped by a non-profit, … Continue reading “World Music Day”
An evening at the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris will provide lots of insights on Northern Ireland, a nation with a still fluctuating identity and status 101 years after its creation. Activist art, thought and song will all combine on 8 June. The Government of Ireland Act that came into force on 3 May 1921, … Continue reading “Everything You Wanted to Know about Northern Ireland”
And in our series Your Students Have Talent, here are three excellent song lyrics written for Shine Bright Terminale Short File 20 Chicago Swing, considering how the city of Chicago uses music as a means of inclusion in a very multicultural urban space. Thank you to Lounès, Flavie and Rosalie for their excellent lyrics. Lounès: … Continue reading “Your Students Have Talent: Chicago Swing”
This worksheet was used as in introductory activity to a project on film musicals for 4e euro. You can read about the project in our Pedagogy section.
Working on musicals from the 1950s to today with 4e euro classes? Well… Why not after all?! Catching fourteen-year-olds’ attention when dealing with musicals from the 1950s may sound like a challenge but this is the very idea! In fact, it all started when we – a colleague and myself – realised that we wouldn’t … Continue reading “Discovering musicals with 4e euro”
St David’s Day, 1 March, is Wales’s national day, in honour of its patron saint. This year, the Welsh government is encouraging people to share “random acts of Welshness” on social media. So what are some distinctively Welsh things to do on 1 March? You can see some of them in this short video: the … Continue reading “Random Acts of Welshness for St David’s Day”
A new biopic of soul diva Aretha Franklin takes its title from one of her most famous songs, “Respect”. This resource will introduce pupils first to the song, which became an anthem for the women’s movement and the civil-rights movement. Then they can discover the biopic. Jennifer Hudson was chosen by Franklin herself before her … Continue reading “Respect: Aretha Franklin Biopic”