Masks and disguises: Notting Hill Carnival

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (People and characters mini-series, episode 30) is a one-minute documentary about the costumes of Notting Hill Carnival, in London, at the end of August, told with real photos. A single narrator starts in a street full of people in costume, in a parade. The carnival started in the 1960s: many people in Notting Hill came from the Caribbean islands, like Trinidad, and they brought their carnival with them. The costumes are huge, with feathers, wings and very bright colours; some are bigger than the people inside them, and people make them by hand, over months. Then the dancers follow the bands through the streets, and the steel pans they play are made from old oil drums. More than a million people come to watch. The present simple carries the episode (wear, make, dance, come), with the past simple for the carnival's roots (started, came, brought), the comparative bigger than, this is and these are to point at a photo, and would you like to in the closing question, with vocabulary for clothes, colours and music. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (huge, parade, band). The study topic is masks and costumes.

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 (Which costume would you like to wear: the wings, the feathers or the big sun?) for a quick class vote, with answers such as I'd like to wear the wings. Learners should know the colours and big, street and music, and be able to read a decade such as the 1960s. Carnival, costume, parade, steel pan, feathers and wings name the subject of the episode, so they are taught for understanding here, above the A1 word lists.

Curriculum alignment

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