Canada: Churchill's polar bears

Objective & content

Churchill is a small town on Hudson Bay, in the north of Canada, where polar bears wait on the shore every autumn for the bay to freeze, because they hunt seals on the sea ice. A single narrator shows how the town lives with them, from the special phone number to the "polar bear jail", then looks closer at the bears' fur and black skin. It is a comprehension episode: the narration uses the present simple, with can and one if sentence as exposure, and no grammar point is taught. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (polar bear jail, shore, fur). It belongs to the mini-series Canada through the seasons (here, autumn), daily life in one place per season.

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. There is also a pupil sheet with the 10 questions and a teacher sheet with the answer key; there is no lesson plan. The script ends on a question, Why do the bears wait on the shore in autumn?, that learners can answer from the link between the sea ice and the seals. Learners should know the words ice, summer, autumn, town and phone; the pack's key words explain the new ones (melt, seal, sea ice, shore, freeze, chase away).

Curriculum alignment

5e, Cycle 4: axis 2 of the programme, "Le quotidien : lieux, rythmes, saisons" (daily life: places, rhythms, seasons), here through autumn in a Canadian town. The episode targets CEFR level A2-.