The queen's secret messages

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Portraits mini-series, episode 15) is a short documentary about the Rainbow Portrait of Queen Elizabeth the First, who was the Queen of England from 1558 to 1603. A single narrator points out the secret messages in the painting: eyes and ears all over her orange cloak (the queen sees and hears everything), a snake on her left sleeve (a sign of wisdom), and a rainbow in her right hand next to four words in Latin, "No rainbow without the sun." The narrator adds that nobody knows the painter's name and that the portrait is in Hatfield House, an old house north of London. The narration describes the painting in the present simple, with there is and was, and its words are about art, clothes and the body. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 9 on facts and 1 on vocabulary (wisdom). The study topic is portraits and what a picture says about the person in it.

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 (What can you see on the queen's cloak?) to have learners describe the cloak in the close-up photo. Learners should know the words eyes, ears, sun and rain, and be able to read dates such as 1558. The pack's key words explain the new words (cloak, sleeve, sign, wisdom).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged portrait-self-portrait (5e, "Portrait, autoportrait", Cycle 4). The episode targets CEFR level A2-.