Ireland: The Giant's Causeway

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Ireland, myths and legends mini-series, episode 51) is a one-minute documentary about the Giant's Causeway, with real photos and drawings of the legend. A single narrator opens on the Causeway, by the sea in Northern Ireland, and asks learners to look closer at the stones: many of them have six sides, and there are about forty thousand, like big steps into the sea. An old legend says a giant made them: Finn McCool wants to fight a giant in Scotland, so he makes a road of stones across the sea. The Scottish giant is very, very big, so Finn's wife dresses Finn as a baby. The Scottish giant sees the big baby, thinks the father must be a monster, runs home to Scotland and breaks the road. Then the narrator gives the true story: about sixty million years ago, lava, very hot liquid rock, came out of the ground, got cold slowly and cracked into these shapes. The episode closes on an opinion question: a road for a giant, or hot rock? The present simple carries the legend (wants, makes, dresses, runs, breaks), the past simple tells the true story (came, got, cracked), with this is and these shapes to point at a picture, the possessive 's (Finn's wife, the Giant's Causeway) and the question what do you think?, with vocabulary for legends, monsters, shapes and large numbers. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (legend, lava, cracked). The study topic is Ireland, land of myths and legends.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script. Each pack is a one-page PDF with the text, three pictures, 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, what do you think: a road for a giant, or hot rock?) for a short class vote: learners answer I think it's a road for a giant or I think it's hot rock (stronger pupils can add because the stones are old lava). Learners should know sea, stone, big, baby, father and large numbers (forty thousand, sixty million), and be able to use the present simple with he and she (She dresses Finn as a baby). Giant and legend name the subject of the episode, and lava names its true story, so they are taught for understanding here, above the A1 word lists; lava and cracked are explained by the script and the pictures.

Curriculum alignment

Tagged imagination-tales-and-legends (6e, "Imaginaire, contes et légendes", study topic "Ireland, land of myths and legends", Cycle 3). The episode targets CEFR level A1+.