Harry Potter's Britain: Edinburgh's graveyard

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (the mini-series Harry Potter's Britain, one real place per episode) is a short documentary that opens on the Glenfinnan Viaduct in Scotland, a bridge in the Harry Potter films that a real steam train still crosses, then moves to Greyfriars Kirkyard, an old graveyard in Edinburgh. A single narrator shows the memorial to the poet William McGonagall, whose name the writer gave to Professor McGonagall, and a stone for a Thomas Riddell who died in 1806; learners compare its spelling with Tom Riddle, Voldemort's other name, and hear that nobody knows for sure if the writer saw this stone. It is a comprehension episode: the narration uses the present simple and the past simple, there is, can and the imperative look, and no grammar point is taught. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (graveyard, viaduct, spelling).

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script. Each pack is a one-page PDF with the text, three pictures, 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 (Where can you find good names for your own stories?) for a short class discussion. Learners should know the words book, film, train and name, and be able to read a year such as 1806. The pack's key words explain the new words (viaduct, steam train, graveyard, fan, stone, poet).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged reality-and-imagination (5e, "Le réel et l'imaginaire", Cycle 4). The episode targets CEFR level A2-.