A night of funny challenges

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Helping others mini-series, episode 44) is a short documentary about BBC Children in Need, one of the biggest charity events in the UK. It opens on a teacher sitting in a bath of cold baked beans while her pupils give money to watch her. Once a year the BBC has a long evening of shows, but the work starts weeks before: people do challenges, pupils come to school in pyjamas or costumes, and in 2011 a TV presenter rode a rickshaw from Edinburgh to London. The idea started on the radio on Christmas Day 1927; the first TV evening in 1980 raised one million pounds, and in 2024 people gave more than thirty-nine million pounds on the night. The money helps children and young people in the UK who have a hard life. The narration uses the present simple, with the past simple for the history (asked, started, raised, rode); no grammar point is taught. It is a listening comprehension episode: learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 8 on facts and 2 on vocabulary (charity and rickshaw). The study topic is people who give their time and money to help others.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script; there is no lesson plan. The episode is illustrated with drawings only. The pupil pack and the teacher pack (answers highlighted) are one A4 page each, with the text, three drawings (the teacher in the bath of beans, a school challenge day, the rickshaw ride), the key words and the 10 questions; a pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key come with them. The text ends with an open question (Think about it: What challenge would you do to raise money, and why?). Learners should know the present simple and the past simple of common verbs, and be able to read dates and large numbers such as thirty-nine million. The pack's key words explain the new words (baked beans, charity, challenge, raise, pyjamas, costume, presenter, rickshaw, passenger).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged c4-encountering-others ("Rencontre avec l'autre"), Cycle 4 (4e). The episode targets CEFR level A2+.