Helping others: Captain Tom and Max

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Helping others mini-series, episode 45) is a short documentary that puts two true stories side by side. In April 2020, when a new illness, Covid-19, kept people at home, Tom Moore, a former army captain aged ninety-nine, walked one hundred times around his garden to thank the NHS. He wanted to raise one thousand pounds; on his birthday the total was more than thirty-two million pounds, and the Queen made him a knight. In Devon, Max Woosey, a boy of ten, slept in a tent that his ill neighbour Rick gave him, to raise money for the hospice that cared for Rick. He slept outside for three years and raised more than seven hundred thousand pounds. The narration is in the past simple, with the past continuous to set the scene (was sleeping, was spreading); no grammar point is taught. It is a listening comprehension episode: learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 8 on facts and 2 on vocabulary (hospice and the NHS). The study topic is people who give their time to help others, whatever their age.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script; there is no lesson plan. Max is a child and is always drawn, never photographed. The pupil pack and the teacher pack (answers highlighted) are one A4 page each, with the text, three pictures (a drawing of Captain Tom walking in his garden, a photo of Tom Moore as a young army officer, a drawing of Max's tent in the rain), the key words and the 10 questions; a pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key come with them. The text ends with an open question (Think about it: Which of the two stories do you like more, and why?). Learners should know the past simple of common verbs and be able to read large numbers such as thirty-two million. The pack's key words explain the new words (walking frame, illness, spread, captain, army, raise, knight, neighbour, hospice, adventure).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged c4-encountering-others ("Rencontre avec l'autre"), Cycle 4 (4e). The episode targets CEFR level A2+.