Harry Potter's Britain: Platform 9¾

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (the mini-series Harry Potter's Britain, one real place per episode) is a short documentary about Platform 9¾ at King's Cross station in London. A single narrator shows the long line of people who come to push a trolley into a wall, recalls how Harry runs through the wall between platforms 9 and 10 in the books, then looks at the real platforms 9 and 10, in another part of the station with only tracks between them. The narrator adds that the writer said she got the platforms wrong, that the film used platforms 4 and 5, and points out that only half of the trolley is in the wall. It is a comprehension episode: the narration uses the present simple and the past simple (said, had, filmed), there is and there are, 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 (trolley, platform, tracks).

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 (Would you wait in the line to push the trolley?) for a short class discussion. Learners should know the words train, book, film and wall, and be able to read numbers such as 9, 10 and 9¾. The pack's key words explain the new words (trolley, platform, tracks, writer, half, side).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged reality-and-imagination (5e, "Le réel et l'imaginaire", Cycle 4): a real place seen through a story. The episode targets CEFR level A2-.