Time capsules: The year 6939

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (the Time capsules mini-series, three real capsules: what people chose to keep, and how the future should find it) is a short documentary about the Westinghouse time capsule of 1938. A single narrator explains what a time capsule is, then follows the metal tube that workers lowered into a hole fifteen metres deep in New York, in September 1938: about two metres long and as heavy as five men, made for the World's Fair of 1939 and meant to be opened in the year 6939, five thousand years later. Pupils see what is inside (a woman's hat, coins, a magazine, a short film, seeds of wheat, corn and rice, and a tiny film of ten million words with a microscope to read it), then how Westinghouse planned for the tube to be found: the Book of Record, sent to more than three thousand libraries, gives its place and even the sounds of 1938 English. A second capsule followed in 1965, three metres away. Pupils then look closer at the message on the tube: "Cherish it therefore in a safe place."

The narration uses the present simple and the past simple (with was and irregular verbs such as made, chose, sent, went), there is and there are, will in a question, the imperative look and a closing question with would; no grammar point is taught. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (time capsule, microscope, seeds). The closing question (What would you put in a time capsule for the year 6939?) is an opinion question for the class. 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, a picture from the 1938 Book of Record, a drawing and a photo of the site today, the 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, each naming one thing they would keep for the year 6939. Learners should know the words box, hat, money and book, and be able to read years such as 1938 and 1965 and large numbers such as 5,000. The pack's key words explain the new words (future, metal, deep, coin, wheat, corn, library).