Cities on the river

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Mississippi mini-series, episode 14) is a short documentary about four big cities on the Mississippi, from north to south. A single narrator starts in Minneapolis, in Minnesota, where the river has a waterfall, St. Anthony Falls; next is St. Louis, in Missouri, with the Gateway Arch, a giant steel arch 192 metres high and 192 metres wide; then Memphis, in Tennessee, where the singer Elvis Presley lived and many people visit his house, Graceland; and at the end New Orleans, the city of jazz, where brass bands still play in the street. Between the cities, a towboat pushes long, flat boats called barges, which carry grain, coal and oil, and one barge can carry as much as 60 lorries. The language is there is and there are, the present simple, lived for Elvis Presley and would like to in the closing question, with vocabulary for towns, transport and music. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (barge, towboat, giant). The study topic is the Mississippi River in the USA.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script. Each pack is a one-page PDF with the text, three photos, the key words and the 10 questions: a pupil pack, and a teacher pack with the answers highlighted. It also has a pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key. It has no lesson plan. Play the episode twice, hand out the pupil pack, then use the closing question (which city would you like to visit?) to start a short class vote. Learners should know city, river and street, and be able to read 192 metres.

Curriculum alignment

Tagged countries-and-landscapes (6e, "Pays et paysages", Cycle 3). The episode targets CEFR level A1+.