The Mississippi: Huckleberry Finn

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Mississippi mini-series, episode 13) is a short documentary about a famous American book, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which Mark Twain wrote in 1884. A single narrator tells the story: Huck, a boy whose father is cruel to him, runs away and hides on an island in the river, where he meets Jim, a man escaping from slavery whose owner wants to sell him far away. The script names slavery once, plainly: "in those days, in some states, people could own other people." Huck and Jim find a raft and want to go north, where Jim can be free, but one foggy night the river carries them south; on the raft they have lots of adventures and become good friends, and the script ends on the book today, read by many American children. The language is present simple to tell the story, wrote and could for the past, want to, can and the connectors so and but, with vocabulary for transport, directions and friendship. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 8 on facts and 2 on vocabulary (raft, slavery). The study topic is the Mississippi River in the USA.

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 (would you like to travel down the river on a raft, like Huck and Jim?) for a short show of hands. Huck and Jim are characters in the novel; Mark Twain is the real writer. Learners should know boy, father, friend, north and south, and be able to read the year 1884.

Curriculum alignment

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