Working lives: The matchgirls' strike

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Working lives mini-series, episode 102) is a short documentary about the matchgirls' strike of 1888 in Bow, in London. Many of the workers at the Bryant and May match factory were teenagers: they worked long days for low pay, paid fines for talking or arriving late, and worked with white phosphorus, a dangerous chemical. After the writer Annie Besant described the factory in her newspaper, a worker was sacked and about 1,400 women and girls walked out; in less than three weeks the company stopped the fines, and the women then started a union. Sarah Chapman was one of the leaders on the strike committee. The narration is in the past simple, with some passive forms (The money was taken from her pay) and relative clauses; no grammar point is taught. It is a listening comprehension episode: learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (on strike, sacked and union).

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script; there is no lesson plan. The pupil pack and the teacher pack (answers highlighted) are one A4 page each, with the text, three pictures (a photo of young members of the match workers' union, a drawing of a worker paying a fine to a foreman, the photo of the strike committee), the key words and the 10 questions; a pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key come with them. The text ends with an open question (Would you go on strike for something you thought was unfair? Why, or why not?). Learners should know the past simple of common verbs and be able to read dates and large numbers. The script explains its new words as it goes (strike, match, fine, phosphorus, sacked, union, committee).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged c4-school-and-society ("École et société") and c4-encountering-others ("Rencontre avec l'autre"), Cycle 4 (3e). The episode targets CEFR level B1-.