The space race: Sputnik

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (The space race mini-series, episode 160) is a short documentary about Sputnik, the first satellite. It opens on a sound: beep, beep, beep. In October 1957, people all over the world heard it on their radios, and it came from space. Sputnik was a metal ball about 58 centimetres wide, with four long aerials, and the Soviet Union launched it on 4 October 1957. The episode explains the Cold War: the Soviet Union and the United States were rivals that did not fight each other directly but competed in everything, from weapons to science and sport. Sputnik went round the Earth every 96 minutes and sent its beep for about three weeks, until its batteries ran out, while radio fans everywhere listened. Many Americans were shocked, because they had thought that their country was the best at science and technology. In 1958, the United States launched its own first satellite and created NASA, and the space race began. The episode then looks closer at Sputnik itself: no camera, no computer, only a radio inside a ball. The narration is in the past simple, with the past perfect (They had thought that..., The space race had begun), relative clauses (an object that goes round the Earth) and a passive (This period is called the Cold War); no grammar point is taught. It is a listening comprehension episode: learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (satellite, aerial, Cold War).

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 photos (a model of Sputnik, three American scientists holding up a model of Explorer 1 in 1958, an astronaut on the Moon in 1969), 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 (Why do you think such a simple machine frightened so many people?). Learners should know the past simple of common verbs and be able to read dates and numbers. The script explains its new words as it goes (satellite, aerial, Cold War).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged c4-school-and-society ("École et société") and c4-encountering-others ("Rencontre avec l'autre"), Cycle 4 (3e). The episode targets CEFR level B1-.