Unusual schools: School of the Air

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Unusual schools mini-series, episode 24) is a short documentary about the School of the Air in Alice Springs, a town in the middle of Australia. A single narrator explains that some families live on cattle stations, very big farms often hundreds of kilometres from a school, so in 1951 Alice Springs started a new kind of school: the children stayed at home and their lessons came by radio, and some families had a pedal radio, which made electricity when you pedalled with your feet. Today the lessons come by satellite internet, and the pupils see their teacher on a computer screen. The school's "classroom" is about 1.3 million square kilometres, more than twice the size of France, and some pupils live more than a thousand kilometres from their teacher. It is a comprehension episode: the narration uses the past simple for 1951 and the present simple for today, and no grammar point is taught. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 8 on facts and 2 on vocabulary (cattle station, pedal radio). 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 school from home, with your teacher on a screen?) for a short class discussion. Learners should know the words farm, radio, computer and screen, and be able to read 1951 and a number such as 1.3 million. The pack's key words explain the new words (cattle station, pedal radio, electricity, satellite).

Curriculum alignment

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