Scottish Highlands: What are the Highlands?

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Highlands mini-series, episode 6) is a short documentary that answers one question: what are the Highlands? A single narrator shows Scotland on a map and places the Highlands in the north and the west. The script explains glen (a valley) and loch (a lake), and the rule A river makes a V. Ice makes a U. It gives Ben Nevis at 1,345 metres and compares the Highland region (about 235,000 people) with Brittany, about the same size but with more than three million people. The language is present simple, there is / there are, short imperatives (Look up!) and large numbers. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (glen, loch, Highlands). The study topic is the Highlands in Scotland.

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 (mountains, glens or lochs: what do you want to see first?) for class discussion. Learners should know the compass points and be able to read a number such as 1,345.

Curriculum alignment

Axis: countries and landscapes (6e, "Pays et paysages", Cycle 3). The episode targets CEFR level A1+.