The Bayou, Louisiana

Objective & content

This documentary explores the bayou in Louisiana, in the south of the United States. It explains how the Mississippi River carries mud to the sea and builds a delta, and why the land is now disappearing: "Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost about 5,000 square kilometres." It presents the bald cypress, the alligator and the Atchafalaya Basin, then the history of New Orleans, the Cajuns, the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The main grammar is the present simple to describe a place, with the past simple for dated events. Learners practise listening comprehension and nature and weather vocabulary.

Materials & prerequisites

• A student sheet and a teacher sheet (PDF and HTML versions) in `printables/`.
• Learners should know the present simple, "there is / there are" and "can".
• A few past simple forms (regular and irregular) are useful for the dated facts.

Curriculum alignment

Tagged `c3-child-and-living-world`: cycle 3 (6e). The episode targets CEFR A2+.