Platypus
Episode of the series Animals & Creatures of Australia
The episode
Dive into the strange and wonderful world of the platypus! Discover how this funny-looking animal with a duck bill, beaver tail, and otter feet lives, hunts, and surprises scientists with its amazing abilities.
Episode worksheets (2)
- Student sheet In your teacher account
- Teacher sheet In your teacher account
Teaching guide
Objective & content
This documentary episode of Animals & Creatures of Australia presents the platypus, an animal that, in the narrator's words, "has parts from different animals". The narrator describes its body (a flat yellow mouth, brown hair, four short legs, a big flat tail), its eggs and its babies (puggles), its food, and the venom spur of the male. The episode ends on where it lives and why it is protected. The language focus is the present simple, with "has" for body description and "can", on a vocabulary of wild animals, body parts, colours and the environment. Learners practise listening for key facts, then answer the in-app quiz.
Materials & prerequisites
- Student sheet and teacher sheet (PDF and HTML versions) in the episode's printables.
- Prerequisites: basic present simple (he/she/it forms), simple adjectives for colour and size, and the names of common body parts.
Curriculum alignment
The episode carries no curriculum axes. It targets CEFR level A1-.
Possible adaptations
- Lower levels: Offer segmented listening and additional visual aids.
- Advanced levels: Encourage an oral summary and a debate in English on the theme.
- Large groups: Organise group work with differentiated roles.
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