Day 8: Discoveries in Montdidier

Our day began with a guided tour in English of the town where our high school is located: Montdidier, France. Here's a link so you can see the town on a map. We started at one of the two Catholic churches in Montdidier, St. Sépulchre.

Here is our group at the 16th century baptismal font.

The rose window --- the stained glass was destroyed in World War I.

We got to go up into the belfry of the church.

Katie in the outer gallery of the upper level of the church. We had a great view of Montdidier from there.

The view inside the church.

At a point along the upper cliff in the town looking down over the valley and with a view of the lower part of the town.

Jacob and Kiel hamming it up in the Japanese garden build by the Japanese sister city of Montdidier.

Austin, Carly, Katie, Chantal, Caroline, and Allison having fun in the sun!

Statue of Montdidier's most famous son, Antoine-Auguste Parmentier. He's famous for bringing potatoes to France. You can read more about him at this link.

After the tour of Montdidier, we had lunch in town and then went back to the high school for an afternoon of learning int he Media Center with lessons set up just for us. One of the students at our partner school brought his family's collection of World War I and II artifacts to share with us. We even got to try on some uniforms!

Kiel totally owned the GI uniform!

After the artifacts, the Westmoore students set about learning through comics about the First World War. This was a special lesson designed by one of the Media Specialists, Florence, who is a good friend of Madame Robillard. She ut a lot of thought and effort into creating a meaningful lesson for our students. She presented it in both French and English.

Students worked in groups to learn the technical vocabulary in French (and in English!) for the art of comics. 

Below is a funny French cartoon. It says: "The dunces who are friends with the teacher's kids also do better in their studies!"

After learning the terminology and some of the technical details related to comic strip books and art, students were given envelopes with a full page of a cartoon story cut into segments. Using cooperative and deductive skills, students had to put the segments together respecting the parameters related to comic stories and still in a logical order.

Here is one of the actual pages from which the segments were taken:

Then, the students completed an activity using display board from the local comic storybook museum in Amiens.

Here is an example of a current-day comic book page about the First World War:

Here is the lovely Florence with one of the displays.

The Media Center at Lycée Jean Racine is a lot like the Media Center at Westmoore. The Media Specialists are wonderful educators --- and they are both named Florence! Below is a poster in French about how to use the Internet safely. There is also a display case with books related to Oklahoma history and culture --- the Media Specialists created this book display to encourage the French students to learn more about our state.