I love talking about Thomas Pesquet in French class! He’s one of my favorite current French personalities to talk about, and my students are pretty enamored of him as well. He’s the astronaut who will be leading the mission to the ISS this week, with a launch scheduled for April 22 at 6:11 EDT. He’s not just an astronaut – he speaks multiple languages, he’s a competitor in Judo, and just an all-around interesting guy. He even plays the saxophone and took it with him on his last mission to space!
I introduced my students to Thomas Pesquet earlier this year. We watched some videos of interviews with him in both French and English. We watched him play the saxophone on the space station. And we’ve been reading from his Twitter account. Although the launch will happen outside of school hours for us, I do plan to watch the launch with my students after the fact. If you’re not familiar with him and would like to learn more, here is a CI lesson for beginning French about the astronaut. If your students are like mine, they’ll feel a little bit inspired and a little bit humbled by all of the things Pesquet has accomplished.
Thomas Pesquet in a bande dessiné
If you enjoy talking about Thomas Pesquet in French class, you might also enjoy the bande dessiné Dans la Combi de Thomas Pesquet. It’s a great book that tells about his career and exploration in space. I know that I’ve had some students in the past who really enjoyed learning about Pesquet, for a variety of reasons. Some were impressed by how many languages he speaks, others loved the fact that he plays the saxophone and some are just into space! There are so many different reasons to teach about Thomas Pesquet and his life story is interesting enough that there are many ways to use him as a topic in the CI classroom.

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