With the recent reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris after its devastating fire in 2019, I thought this might be a great topic for a French Club meeting. My French Club meets once a month and does an activity, usually cultural, relating to some aspect of the French-speaking world. All students are welcome, even if they don’t take French, so activities can’t require background knowledge of the French language.
In my search for an activity students could do relating to the cathedral, I came upon this blog post by art teacher Marcia Beckett about scratch art stained-glass windows. I loved the idea and the student examples she provided. I bought some scratch art paper on Amazon and created a PowerPoint to tell students about the cathedral, what happened to it, and how it was restored (email subscribers, click here to access the PowerPoint). I incorporated several of my own photos into the presentation.
I found this brief video which shows what the cathedral looked like as it was burning and what it looks like now after the restoration (email subscribers, click here to watch the video).
I made my own example to show students. The idea is to use photos of real stained-glass windows as inspiration for the general shape but then put your own personal twist on it. I put a fleur de lys in the center and added my initials and jockey silks and horseshoes at the bottom because I have an interest in horse racing. I did an initial sketch before drawing this, and gave students scrap paper if they wanted to make one before starting on their drawings.
I showed the students the PowerPoint, the video, and my example, and then students got to work on their own. Here are some of the results:
I think the activity went really well and students enjoyed it. The only thing I wish could have been done differently was the amount of time. We have a half hour for after school clubs, which, for this activity, was a little rushed. I think the activity could have been even more meaningful if we had had 45 minutes or even an hour to talk more in detail about Notre Dame and have time for students to work.
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