Is this Nessie?

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Highlands mini-series, episode 8) is a short "this or that" documentary about Loch Ness and the 1934 photo of Nessie. A single narrator gives the size of the loch (more than 35 kilometres long, about 230 metres deep) and asks learners to look closer: nothing in the photo shows how big the thing is, and the ripples are small. The script then says that in 1994 the newspapers told the secret: the "monster" was a toy submarine with a small head. The language is present simple, imperatives (Look closer.), There is no boat, no tree, no person and a few past forms (was, told), with vocabulary for size and large numbers. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (neck, toy, trick). The study topic is the Highlands in Scotland.

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 (big monster or small toy?) for class discussion. Learners should know long and small (deep is explained in the key words), and be able to read years such as 1934 and 1994.

Curriculum alignment

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