The Grand Canyon
Episode of the series Natural Wonders of America
The episode
Where the desert opens up. In the red rock of Arizona the flat ground suddenly drops away, the walls go straight down, and far below a small green river keeps cutting.
Episode worksheets (2)
- Student sheet In your teacher account
- Teacher sheet In your teacher account
Teaching guide
Objective & content
This documentary presents the Grand Canyon in Arizona, one of the great natural wonders of America. The narrator describes its size, the South Rim, the Bright Angel Trail and the Colorado River, then explains how water and time cut the canyon. The script also names the Havasupai, the Hopi, the Navajo and the Hualapai peoples, the explorer John Wesley Powell and the national park of 1919. The main language focus is present simple description of a place, with past simple for dated facts, plus vocabulary of rock, river, animals and history. Learners practise listening comprehension, and the key line is "Drop by drop, day by day, the water carried the rock away."
Materials & prerequisites
- Student sheet and teacher sheet (PDF and HTML versions).
- Prerequisites: present simple, there is and there are, and a first contact with regular past simple forms.
Curriculum alignment
Tagged to the cycle 3 axis "child and living world" (c3-child-and-living-world), for 6e classes. The episode targets CEFR level A2+.
Possible adaptations
- Lower levels: Offer segmented listening and additional visual aids.
- Advanced levels: Encourage an oral summary and a debate in English on the theme.
- Large groups: Organise group work with differentiated roles.
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