Le passé et le présent

Key Sounds

Listen and enjoy copying these typical sounds: where have you heard them before?

(‘un abri anti-aérien’), show children how to research printed or online bilingual dictionaries as in mine, mineur, métier heard before in facile, diff icile, mille as in...explosion, coron, heard before in charbon, bon as in...lampe, heard before in an, janvier as in...charbon, heard before in charette à cheval, as in... métier, était heard before in année, été, école

Ask children to work in groups, picking pictures about which they can make a simple statement in French.

If their pictures compare past and present, they should use the “il y avait...”/ “il y a...” structures; otherwise, just “il y avait...”.

To find topic-specific words, e.g. ‘a gas mask’ ( ‘un masque à gaz’ ), ‘an air raid shelter’

HOW FRENCH

The past - ‘what it was like...’

Children also hear people use adjectives to describe what jobs used to be like (over a period of time). Teachers will know this is the imperfect tense, e.g le métier de... (mineur 1)... était ...(dangereux 2) the job of... (a miner)... was... (dangerous)

NOTES:

1. In French you often refer to a job without an article, e.g. ‘le métier de mineur...’, ‘je suis mineur.’ (I am a miner);

2. ‘métier’ (job) is a masculine noun, so the adjective describing the job is masculine, e.g. ‘dangereux’ NOT ‘dangereuse’.

❑ Make a tourist guide to your town: Ask children to prepare a tourist guide for French visitors to your community, or to the place your class has been studying. Compare what things are like now with a past era, with text or recorded commentary in French. Discuss whether you want to make a printed leaflet, an audio guide, or an online multimedia guide that visitors could even use on their smartphones as they go round your town.

Talking point 1

EVERYDAY LIFE IN France

Coal mining in the 1950s

The coal mines of Northern France were made famous by French author Émile Zola’s 19th century novel “Germinal”. Zola exposed the brutal exploitation of the poor miners by private mine-owners, who grew rich whilst paying the miners as little as possible to work in dirty and dangerous conditions underground.

Exploitation of miners

Miners were encouraged to dig out as much coal as quickly as possible, whilst not “wasting” time on making the mine safe by putting in wooden pit-props to stop the roof caving in.

1906 Courrières disaster: mounted troops face angry miners’ families Wages were paid in a “pub” run by the mineowners, where miners were encouraged to drink their wages. In 1906 in nearby Courrières, 1,099 miners died after an explosion underground. The public and government saw there was no pay or help for sick or injured miners and their families, and no paid annual holidays apart from religious festival days. Miners lived in rows of slum cottages built by the mine-owners around the pit-head, next to a towering heap of waste rock (a slag-heap or “terril”) that was dug out to get at the coal. Miners could lose their house if they fell sick, if they went on strike, or if the owners could not sell enough coal.

C2: 1907 Fashion

Planning your lessons

Film C2 looks at fashions in another epoque - which are described in the present tense. For your class, you can compare fashions in any period that might fit with your work in history, the resources you have available, or with the history of your own community. Other history topics could be, say, the Second World War or Victorians.

Activities

Warm up

One of the coal-mines near Béthune. By the 1950s, French mines had changed out of all recognition, although the miners’ houses still look like squalid dirty slums to modern eyes. The French coal-mines were nationalised (‘owned by the government’) and were much safer with fewer accidents. Miners were provided with baths and showers to clean themselves before going home. But in the 1970s coalmines were closed as people changed to using oil and petrol instead. The French government helped the old mining areas find new industries, and to clean up the mess left by the past. They even found new uses for old slag-heaps; in film B2 one is shown transformed into an artificial ski slope.

Before showing film C2 , warm up by reminding children of clothes they can already say they are wearing in French, using the phrase “Je porte... (une robe fleurie)” You could use the e-flashcards from French 2

Watch film C2: Fashions in 1907

❑ Watch film C2 which shows people in the school celebrations wearing fashions from 1907, also contemporary illustrations from the school’s exhibition. People in the procession describe their clothes in the present tense.

Film C2: “Mon bébé porte une robe blanche avec un chapeau de l’époque”

Discuss with the class (in English or your own language) how the fashions shown differ from those familiar in your community today

Try to identify some key characteristics of men’s, women’s and children’s fashions of the time, e.g. ‘the women wore long dresses’, the men wore hats’, etc.

Get used to the sounds

❑ Echoing: Show film C1 again.

Pause the film so that children can describe what different people are wearing; you could