A puppy for one year

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Helping others mini-series, episode 46) is a short documentary about puppy raisers, the volunteers who look after a guide dog puppy for the charity Guide Dogs. A guide dog helps a blind person to walk safely in the street. The puppy arrives at its new home when it is about eight weeks old, and its raisers teach it to be calm everywhere: on buses and trains, in shops and cafés and along busy streets. The charity pays for its food and for the vet, and the puppy often wears a little jacket with the words "puppy in training". When it is a little more than one year old, it leaves its family and starts its real training: saying goodbye is hard, but one day the puppy can change a blind person's life. The narration uses the present simple; 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 (guide dog and puppy raisers). The study topic is people who give their time to help others.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script; there is no lesson plan. The pupil pack and the teacher pack (answers highlighted) are one A4 page each, with the text, three photos (guide dog puppies in their training jackets, a puppy lying calmly at a café, a guide dog at work), 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: Could you give a puppy back after one year? Why, or why not?). Learners should know the present simple and words for places in a town. The pack's key words explain the new words (puppy, guide dog, blind, volunteer, puppy raiser, calm, crowd, noise, vet, training).

Curriculum alignment

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