Time capsules: Paul Revere's box

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (the Time capsules mini-series, three real boxes that people filled for the future) is a short documentary about the time capsule of the Massachusetts State House in Boston. A single narrator tells how, on 4 July 1795, two heroes of the American Revolution, Samuel Adams, the governor, and Paul Revere, a silversmith, put a small box under the first stone of the new building. Workers found it in 1855, cleaned what was inside, added new coins and put it back; then everybody forgot about it. In December 2014, workers repairing a water leak found it again, and in January 2015 experts opened it very slowly at a museum, with tiny tools and a porcupine quill. Inside were five old newspapers, a silver plate probably made by Paul Revere and more than twenty coins. Pupils then look closer at the oldest coin, which shows a pine tree and the date 1652. Some months later the box went back under the stone with new things from 2015.

The narration uses the past simple (with was and were), the past continuous (were repairing), there were, the imperative look and a closing question with will; no grammar point is taught. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (time capsule, silversmith, porcupine quill). The closing question (When do you think somebody will open it again?) asks for an opinion, so every answer is welcome; it works well as a short class discussion. The episode targets CEFR level A2+.

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, two photos and a drawing, six key words and the 10 questions. The folder also holds a one-page pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key. Play the episode twice, hand out the pupil pack, then let pupils answer the closing question together. Learners should know the words box, museum, newspaper and tree, and be able to read years such as 1795 and 2015. The pack's key words explain the new words (hero, governor, leak, copper, coin, plate).