Unusual schools: Foula

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Unusual schools mini-series, episode 26) is a short documentary about the school on Foula, a small island in Scotland where fewer than twenty people live, about twenty-six kilometres west of the main island of Shetland. A single narrator explains that in 2022 the school had four pupils and one little child in the nursery; the four pupils are different ages, so they all learn in the same classroom with the same teacher, who is also the head teacher. There is no bridge to the island: you get there by a small boat, a trip of about two hours, or by a little plane, a flight of only fifteen minutes, and in bad weather the island waits. The school building is also the island's hall, a place for parties and meetings. It is a comprehension episode: the narration uses the present simple, with there is and can / cannot, and no grammar point is taught. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 8 on facts and 2 on vocabulary (head teacher, hall). The study topic is school life: unusual schools in the English-speaking world.

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 go to a school with only four pupils?) for a short class discussion, with learners comparing Foula's school with their own. Learners should know the words school, teacher, people and minutes, and be able to read 2022. The pack's key words explain the new words (island, nursery, head teacher, bridge, flight).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged school-and-leisure (5e, "École et loisirs", Cycle 4). The episode targets CEFR level A2-.