On Broadway: The Great White Way

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Broadway mini-series, episode 110) is a one-minute documentary about Broadway in New York, told with real photos. A single narrator explains that thousands of people come to see a show every evening, that many shows are musicals, and that there are forty-one big Broadway theatres; then the street signs show that only three of them are really on Broadway, and the bright lights give this part of the street its name, "the Great White Way". Learners meet the present simple to describe a place (people come, each one has, people call), there are (there are forty-one big Broadway theatres), This is ..., the negative aren't, big numbers (forty-one, five hundred, thousands) and a closing Would you like to ...? question. The vocabulary is about shows and theatres, music, the town and big numbers. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 8 on facts and 2 on vocabulary (musical, the Great White Way).

Materials & prerequisites

You need the episode (audio and slideshow) and the printables: a one-page pupil pack and teacher pack (the text, three pictures, 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 numbers up to one hundred and there is / there are. Broadway and the Great White Way are names, and the episode explains the second one; musical is explained in the episode (the actors sing and dance), and the street signs are shown on screen.

Curriculum alignment

Tagged art-and-expression-of-feelings (6e, "Arts et expression des sentiments", study topic "Welcome to Broadway", Cycle 3). The episode targets CEFR level A1+.