National sports: Ice hockey

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (National sports mini-series, episode 232) is a short documentary about ice hockey in Canada and its most famous prize. It starts with the sport everywhere in Canadian life: the national winter sport, children who learn to skate very young, games on frozen lakes, rivers and garden rinks. In 1892, Lord Stanley, the British Governor General of Canada, bought a silver bowl in London, for about fifty dollars at the time, as a prize for the best team in Canada; it became the Stanley Cup, which the best team of the NHL wins today. Two strange stories follow: an old story says that in 1905 players from Ottawa kicked the Cup onto a frozen canal and came back for it the next day (the episode tells it as a story, not as a certain fact), and in 1924 players from Montreal left it by the side of the road after a flat tyre and found it again in the snow. It ends with the Cup today: the names of the winning players written on it, its height of almost ninety centimetres, each winning player's day with it, and the keeper in white gloves who travels with it. The narration is in the past simple, with the present simple for today and one past continuous ("were driving"); no grammar point is taught. It is a listening comprehension episode: learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: all 10 on facts. The study topic is ice hockey as an institution in Canada.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script; there is no lesson plan. The pupil pack and the teacher pack (answers highlighted) are one A4 page each, with the text, three pictures (a photo of people skating on the frozen Rideau Canal in Ottawa, a drawing of Lord Stanley buying the silver bowl in London, a photo of the names on the Cup), the key words and the 10 questions; a pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key come with them. The text ends with an open question (Think about it: If you had the Stanley Cup for one day, what would you do with it?). Learners should know the past simple of common verbs and be able to read dates. The pack's key words explain the new words (ice hockey, skate, ice rink, silver, bowl, prize, cup, league, kick, canal, tyre, cereal, glove).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged c4-encountering-others ("Rencontre avec l'autre"), Cycle 4 (4e). The episode belongs to the 2027 4e programme axis "Sport et société" (study topic "Le hockey sur glace : une institution au Canada"). The episode targets CEFR level A2+.