CONTENTS:
Introduction
1 Healthy eating
2 Parts of the body
3. Circus school
4 Mini-beasts
5 Zoo
6 Morocco
7 Going to school
8 Seasons
9 Past & present
10 Out and about
11 Cinderella

• Talking Point - Where is Béthune?
• Talking Point - Edgar Degas' ballet pictures
• Talking Point - Ballet in France
• Play French "Twister"
• QUIZ

What you will learn with film 2

Summary

This section introduces parts of the body.

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Talking Point: Where is Béthune?

Find out more about Béthune:

http://www.theotherside.co.uk/tm-heritage/towns/bethune.htm

Talking Point: Edgar Degas - 19th century ballet pictures

Edgar Degas painted a series of ballet pictures in the 19th century: this is "The Rehearsal".

Over half his works are about dancers. He aimed to portray them as hard-working professionals, and to show their life behind the scenes - at rehearsals, and so on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degas

http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/edgar-degas

Talking Point: Ballet in France

More information for teachers.

Find out more about ballet from these sites:

http://www.the-ballet.com/louisxiv.php

http://www.ballet.co.uk/

Websites for children:

Information for young ballet dancers:

http://dance.about.com/od/getstarteddancing/p/Young_Dancers.htm

Website for younger children based on the popular books about Angelina Ballerina, the dancing mouse.

http://www.angelinaballerina.com/uk/home.html

ACTIVITIES

The Five Positions

As ballet was formalised in France, most ballet positions are described in French, so anyone who's learnt ballet will also have learnt some French. A list of ballet terms can be found on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_ballet

See the Five Positions of ballet on Youtube:

Video demonstration of the Five ballet positions

If you have any children in your class who do ballet, you could ask them to demonstrate the Five Positions and other steps. The dancers could also speak the French terms for each position.

NB Children who haven't had ballet lessons shouldn't attempt any of the positions - they could hurt themselves.

Classroom display

The class could draw pictures of ballet dancers in different positions, and label the parts of the body in French, as part of a classroom display.

Children also could design costumes based on a familiar story such as Cinderella, and revise clothes by labelling these in French as well. Ballet costume is not just tutus - you could look at some modern ballet costumes as well.

The Royal Opera House has a collection of pictures of their ballet costumes on-line:

http://www.rohcollections.org.uk/CollectionCostumes.aspx

Buy real French Twister...!
Link to French Amazon.

How well did you do? Try this chapter's QUIZ

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