The Highland Games

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Highlands mini-series, episode 7) is a short documentary about the Highland Games, a sports day that happens every summer in many Scottish towns and villages. A single narrator describes two events: the caber toss, where players must pick up a piece of wood about five metres long and throw it so that it turns over and lands straight, and the tug of war, where two teams pull a rope. The script adds pipe bands playing the bagpipes and the kilt, a traditional skirt made of tartan. The language is present simple and must for rules, with vocabulary for sport, music and clothes. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (heavy, team, kilt). 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 (the caber toss or the tug of war?) to start a short class vote. Learners should know the words long, wood and rope, and be able to read five metres.

Curriculum alignment

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