Saint-Michel Blanquefort, European School

2nde ProR : paintings and colours

3 November, 2009 Culture, Reading, Writing 24 commentaires

This is the painting you have in your book page 26. It is called “Sunset, Canoe Lake” and its author is Tom Thomson.
Find information about the painter and describe the painting.

Sunset, Canoe Lake

Please post a comment. Get a help from the document you have at the bottom of page 26 and from the word list you were given in class.
MC Poussard

24 commentaire(s) | Recommander à un ami | Signaler comme indésirable

SPVL 1 : graduation ceremony in the USA

26 April, 2009 Culture, Reading 22 commentaires

Dear students,

Welcome back… before you leave school, we must finish our topic 5 about Education. I would like you to discover a very important day in the life of American students, at the end of each year, it’s called graduation day.

1 ) Look at the 2 pictures and tell us what you can see (who ? what are they wearing ? why are they together ? what are they doing ?)

2 ) Now go to this link. Let’s read extracts from the text, and talk together :

Graduation ceremony – Wikipedia article

P. Couturier

22 commentaire(s) | Recommander à un ami | Signaler comme indésirable

SPVL1 : here’s what binge drinking looks like…

29 January, 2009 Reading 33 commentaires

Dear SPVL1 students,

Here are a few pictures for you to understand what binge drinking is. It’s a major problem in the British society :

People drink so much that they are sick… and it can cause many health problems. You can see such pictures in the streets of London at night on Fridays and Saturdays… So the government and many associations have been campaigning to warn people. Here’s one example :

You can also watch this video :

Binge drinking in England

So, what do you think ? Feel free to write a comment…

P. Couturier

33 commentaire(s) | Recommander à un ami | Signaler comme indésirable

French master pastry chef Gaston Lenotre just died (Paris – AFP)

8 January, 2009 PROFESSIONAL, Reading Aucun commentaire

French master pastry chef Gaston Lenotre, who built a worldwide empire with his gourmet dessert creations that defined modern patisserie, died Thursday at the age of 88. He passed away at his home in the central French region of Sologne after a long illness. President Nicolas Sarkozy said he was “one of the greatest masters of taste.” … ”Thanks to his talent and creativity, his rigour and excellence, he elevated patisserie to the rank of art form,” he said in a statement.

“We have lost a very great man,” said three-star chef Alain Ducasse, another ambassador for French cuisine who learned the art of pastry-making from Lenotre as a young man.

Born to parents who both worked as cooks in the northwest region of Eure, Lenotre opened his first pastry shop in Paris in 1957 in the rich 16th arrondissement of the French capital. Soon he attracted a loyal clientele with his mouth-watering array of mousses, macaroons and charlotte cakes and turned Lenotre into a brand name synonymous with fine patisserie.

Lenotre broke from traditional French pastry-making by inventing lighter creations such as his trademark “Succes” (Success) cake made with nougat cream and macaroons.

Cuisine was in his blood : his father was a chef at a upscale Paris hotel and his mother a private cook for the household of the baron Pereire, a wealthy French banker.

“French pastry-making taught me to be precise, to have discipline,” he once said in an interview. “If I see that things are sloppily done, I lose it.”

In 1960, he opened a catering service that would lay the foundation for an international food empire, with Lenotre boutiques now open in 12 countries including the United States, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Thailand.

Lenotre opened a pastry school in the Paris region in 1971 that welcomes some 3,000 chefs each year, and in 1976 took over Le Pre Catalan, a three-star restaurant and two other establishements.

“He taught us to be demanding, to share knowledge and to have a taste for what is beautiful and delicious.”

A father of three, Lenotre is also the author of several books on French pastry and cuisine.

0 Commentaire | Recommander à un ami | Signaler comme indésirable