Ireland: The Book of Kells

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Ireland mini-series, episode 131) is a short documentary about the Book of Kells, a book of the four Gospels in Latin that monks made around the year 800, probably starting it on the island of Iona, in Scotland, and finishing it at Kells, in Ireland. It describes the book (680 pages of vellum, made from calfskin, with colours from plants and minerals), its journey to Trinity College in Dublin, where about a million people come to see it every year, and the two cats watching some mice at the bottom of the famous Chi Rho page. 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 (monks and vellum). The study topic is Ireland: its traditions and places, then and now.

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, three pictures (the Chi Rho page of the Book of Kells, a drawing of monks writing, a close-up of the two cats and the mice), 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 (Why do you think the monks put animals in their book?). Teachers may want to check beforehand that learners can read dates and past simple verbs. The pack's key words explain the new words (monk, monastery, pray, Gospel, vellum, calf, mineral, detail, thief, steal, university).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged c4-encountering-others ("Rencontre avec l'autre") and ireland (axis 6, "L'Irlande"), Cycle 4 (4e). The episode targets CEFR level A2+.