Séance 2 : the Wild West Introduction : Why do you think we say the

Séance 2 : the Wild West
Introduction :
Why do you think we say the wild west? Question dans le but de faire réfléchir les élèves sur cet élément.
Maybe there are many wild animals. Indians. Mainly countryside landscape, desert, specific climate.
What sort of images come to mind? Buffaloes. Hunt. Mountains. Desert. You can get inspiration from what we saw on the
license plates.
Can you think of any movie? Westerns...
Norman Rockwell: The stagecoach
Rappel du vocabulaire iconographique de la part des élèves.
We are immediately struck by the stagecoach and horses galloping at full speed to escape a group of Indians. This is a typical
scene from a western: The Indians outnumber the Whites. The travellers are besieged by Indians on a dangerous journey.
The Indians use arrows and spears to kill the people in the stagecoach. This painting is striking because it is full of
movement, it conveys an impression of danger and isolation. This scene is a typical western drama.
What in this picture can make you think of the wild west? The indians on the left hand side of the painting. The landscape
in which there seem to be no trace of civilization/wilderness. The violence of the persons.
Rachel Dickinson's text.
For many people, the word “Frontier” brings to mind images of the Wild West. Maybe the word makes you think of cowboys
and Indians, or a stagecoach pulled by a team of horses, kicking up a cloud of dust in a vast dry landscape. Or maybe the
word paints a scene of a frontier town with horses tied to a hitching post in front of a saloon with swinging doors. Some who
hear the word “frontier” see a miner with a long beard and a hat panning for gold in a creek, while others imagine a long
train covered wagons, loaded with pioneers and all their belongings.
The frontier is the edge of what is known – the farthest point of civilization or settlement, and throughout much of
America's history that meant that the frontier was to the west. Not long after, Europeans settled along the East coast, some
settlers began to move west, inland, in search of land, natural resources like water, and animals to hunt. As more Europeans
came to the New World to start a new life, and as the population of the colonies began to grow, the desire to explore the
West increased. Colonists wanted to claim a piece of the wilderness before someone else did […]. They wanted good fertile
land that could be farmed and hunted.
In the early 1800s […] floods of emigrants streamed into the frontier. Most people were lured to the West by the promise of
land, the hope of finding gold, or the idea of a place where they could practice their religion without persecution. And many
people developed these expectations when they saw posters known as broadsides, advertisements in newspapers, or letters
from family and friends who had already made the journey.
Repérages:
Pick out the people (every words that designate peope), the places and the time markers/or other indications of time.
Which words designate the same people?
Places, which place does the text particularly deal with? The west. What is the New World?
What are the different periods referred to? The sixteenth century, when Europeans started to colonize the New World. The
ninetheenth century, when there were more people on the continent.
To find the topic of the document, use the noun that the narrator repeats the most. “Frontier”
Read the text again and pick out the tenses. Where are they located? Present in the first paragraph and the past in the
other two paragraphs. Why are they different tenses? In the first paragraph it is more general whereas in the other two
paragraphs it concerns facts of history.
Use the people you've picked out and differenciate the people from the past from the people of the present tense. Help:
generally the subject of a verb in the present tense.
Focus on the first paragraph:
Pick out an adverb which is repeated twice. Maybe. So what will we find in this paragraph? Hypotheses. About what?
Hypotheses about what people think of with the word “frontier”.

Read this paragraph and pick out the hypotheses, how many are there? Six dont une qui est le thème principal des autres
hypothèses (la première). Mettre des numéros dans le texte au début de chaque hypothèses.
Activité: Demander aux élèves de se mettre en groupes de deux, trois si une personne seule. Donner deux hypothèses à
chaque binôme pour qu'ils les représentent en images. Possibilité de prendre quelques bons modèles pour les scanner et les
mettre sur pronote. 5 minutes.
Focus on the last paragraphs
Read the first sentence, what is it? It's a definition of the word “frontier”. Pour vérifier leur compréhension: what is on the
east part of the frontier? Civilization, people, something known. On the west part? The unknown.
Can you recall who are the people in this part? Europeans who settled in the US.
If you focus on the places mention in this paragraph, what do we learn about the European settlers? At the beginning they
were all on the East coast but then they moved towards the west.
Pick out the different reasons. “in search of land, natural resources, like waters and animals to hunt”; “desire to explore the
west”; “ Colonists wanted to claim a piece of the wilderness before someone else did”; “ They wanted good fertile land that
could be farmed and hunted”.
In the 19th century, what are the reasons for people going to west? Use your own words. The gold rush/the desire the find
gold; to practice their religion freely; because people said good things about the west.
Recap:
This is an extract from a book written by Rachel Dickinson and entitled […]. This is about an American concept, the
“frontier”. It concerns the western part of the USA and the period of time is from the arrival of European settlers in the 16th
century to the 19th century. In the first paragraph the narrator makes hypotheses about what people might think of when
they hear the word “frontier” in the USA. There are five hypotheses and all conjures up images of the Wild West such as ….
Then, the narrator gives a definition of the “frontier”, this is the limit between what is known/civilization, and what is
unknown.
Finally, this is about European settlers who decided to go to the New World around the 16th-17th century, and the reasons
why they decided to go there. The main reason was that they wanted to explore the territory and take advantage of its
natural resources and use the space. Later, in the 19th century, people were attracted by the West because they wanted to
find gold, practice their religion freely...
Inférence:
Use the context to find a synonym of journey.
Find two words in the text derived from the root “settle”. Settlers / settlement
Find one word in the text derived from the root “colony”/”wild”. Colonist/ wilderness
Demander à quelle catégorie grammaticale ces mots appartiennent.
Les mots finissant en “ness” sont toujours des noms.
Que désigne settlers? Qu'a t'on rajouté au mot d'origine pour que cela ait ce sens? Connaissez-vous d'autres mots qui
finissent avec le même suffixe?
Mêmes questions pour “Colonists”
Pour conclure: lorsque l'on ne connaît pas un mot on essaye de l'analyser pour savoir à quelle catégorie grammaticale il
appartient, on regarde avant et après le mot. Mais on peut aussi regarder les suffixes qui peuvent déjà nous donner une
idée. Découper le mot pour voir s'il y a des suffixes et si la racine est connue. Faire ce genre d'analyse pour les mots
inconnus pourraient éviter des contre-sens!
Récapitulatif méthodo. Les différentes étapes pour comprendre un texte (accent surtout sur le repérage et inférence).