Families: The Railway Children

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Families mini-series, episode 140) is a one-minute documentary about the family in The Railway Children, a famous British book Edith Nesbit wrote in 1906, told with drawings. A single narrator introduces the three children, Roberta (everyone calls her Bobbie), Peter and Phyllis, who live with their mother in a little house next to a railway, then tells how they stop a train with six red flags when big rocks fall onto the line. Learners meet the present simple for telling a story (takes, waves, sees, stops), there are (There are three children), can't (The driver can't see the rocks), the possessives their, her and my, and a closing Would you like to ...? question. The vocabulary is about the family, trains, clothes and colours. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (railway, petticoat, danger). The study topic is fictional and real families.

Materials & prerequisites

You need the episode (audio and slideshow) and the printables: a pupil pack and a teacher pack (the text, three drawings, 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 family words (mother, father, sister), the colour red and the present simple with he and they. Railway names the subject, so it is taught for understanding; petticoat and flag are shown in the drawings.

Curriculum alignment

Tagged people-and-characters (6e, "Personnes et personnages", study topic "Familles fictives et réelles", Cycle 3). The episode targets CEFR level A1+.