A British Christmas: Christmas pudding

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (A British Christmas mini-series, episode 73) is a one-minute documentary about the Christmas pudding, told with real photos, old book drawings and drawings. A single narrator shows the dark, round pudding, explains why its old name, plum pudding, is a puzzle (long ago, plum meant raisins and other dried fruit), then presents the family customs of Stir-up Sunday, the lucky silver coin and the pudding on fire. Learners meet the present simple for traditions (eat, make, stirs, comes, gets), This is ..., there's and there are no ..., the possessive its (its old names) and a closing Are there any ...? question. The vocabulary is about food, cooking and celebrations. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 8 on facts and 2 on vocabulary (stir, plum).

Materials & prerequisites

You need the episode (audio and slideshow) and the printables: a one-page pupil pack and teacher pack (the text, three pictures, the key words and the 10 questions, with the answers highlighted in the teacher pack), a pupil question sheet and a teacher answer key. There is no lesson plan. Learners should know the present simple with they and everyone (they make a wish, everyone eats a piece) and some food words. Christmas pudding names the subject, so it is taught for understanding; stir is explained in the episode (to move a spoon round and round), the coin is shown in a drawing, and flames comes with on fire.

Curriculum alignment

Tagged art-and-expression-of-feelings (6e, "Arts et expression des sentiments", study topic "The imagery of the holiday season", Cycle 3): it shows one of the best-known pictures of a British Christmas, the Christmas pudding on fire. The episode targets CEFR level A1+.