Families: The royal family

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (People and characters mini-series, episode 29) is a one-minute documentary about the British royal family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace at the end of the King's birthday parade in June, told with real photos (the balcony photo is from Trooping the Colour, 2023) and a drawn family tree. A single narrator shows who's who across three generations: King Charles and Queen Camilla, the King's son Prince William with his wife and their three children, then the King's sister and brother. The present simple carries the episode (is, are, comes out), with the possessive 's and family words (the King's son, the King's sister, grandchildren, wife) and this is and these are to point at people in a photo. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on family words. The study topic is fictional and real families.

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. It also has a pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key. It has no lesson plan. Play the episode twice, hand out the pupil pack, then use the closing question (So, who is Prince George's grandfather?) to have learners draw a small family tree of the royal family, or of a family from a book or a film, with sentences such as This is the King's son. Learners should know children and birthday, the colours red and green, and in the middle and on the left to place people in a photo.

Curriculum alignment

Tagged people-and-characters (6e, "Personnes et personnages", study topic "Familles fictives et réelles", Cycle 3). The episode targets CEFR level A1+.