Cowboys, Part 1: Life on the Trail

Objective & content

Two friends talk about American cowboys and life on the trail: one friend explains, the other asks. The episode starts with the first cowboys, the Mexican vaqueros, then follows the cattle drives from Texas north to Kansas after 1866, with about three thousand cows and only ten or twelve cowboys, many of them black, Mexican or Native American. It shows a cowboy's day on the trail, from the horses and the night songs for the cows to the chuckwagon, and ends in Abilene, the cow town on the Chisholm Trail, named after Jesse Chisholm, a Cherokee trader. The trail story is told in the past simple (worked, walked, rode, sang, went), with was and were, did questions ("How far did they go every day?") and didn't, and words are defined in the present simple (a cowboy is, chuck means). Learners listen for the places, the numbers and the dates, then answer the quiz in the app and the one-page pupil sheet.

Pedagogical guide

The 45-minute lesson plan starts from a drawing of a big hat and a horse: what does a cowboy do? Learners preview eight trail words, listen twice (once for where the first cowboys came from, once with four pauses for questions), then check the facts, practice the vocabulary, sort sentences into "today" and "on the trail, a long time ago" to notice the past simple, and ask and answer questions about the trail in pairs. At A1+ learners form simple past simple questions themselves ("Where did the cowboys go?") and answer briefly ("To Kansas."). Most activities have a support path and a stretch path.

Suggested procedure

1. Activate knowledge (3 min): draw a big hat and a horse, and ask what a cowboy does.
2. Vocabulary preview (5 min): cowboy, trail, cattle drive, chuckwagon, cook, boss, cow town, trader.
3. First listen (5 min): play the whole episode (about three and a half minutes) and ask where the first cowboys came from.
4. Second listen (12 min): pause four times to ask about the vaqueros and who the cowboys were, the horses and the night songs, the chuckwagon, and the end of the trail.
5. Comprehension check (5 min): the Facts part of the pupil sheet (questions 1 to 6, as in the app quiz).
6. Vocabulary practice (5 min): the Vocabulary part (questions 7 to 12).
7. Grammar focus (5 min): sort the episode's sentences into "today" and "on the trail", match past forms to their base verbs (work and worked, ride and rode, go and went), then the Grammar part (questions 13 to 18).
8. Speaking (5 min): in pairs, students ask and answer the episode's questions about the trail.

Materials & prerequisites

• The episode in the app, with its quiz.
• The one-page pupil sheet (18 items: facts, vocabulary, grammar) and its answer key, in the episode's printables.
• Prerequisites: the present simple, and years and big numbers in English.