A quick glance at Google Maps and one might be forgiven for thinking that this tiny isle belongs to the French. However, borders are never drawn by common sense, and gifting land to the French for the sake of geographical coherence (let alone giving the French anything) is, well… most unthinkable.

Existing in this geographical limbo, Jersey is not one of the islands that come to mind when talking about the British Isles, which is why I came up with this mini-lesson to remedy that. Feel free to use it as a filler, or flesh it out with a discussion about travel to cover an entire lesson.

Enough talk — here’s the lesson plan:

Lesson Plan

Materials

Questions

Word list

And this video:

Instructions

Easy peasy: Watch the film, answer the questions and give definitions to the words in the vocab list.

Questions

The presenter describes the island of Jersey as “A little slice of Britain with a Gaelic twist.” What does he mean by that, and what is “Gaelic”?

Jersey covers an area of nine miles by five miles. Can you put that into perspective? In other words: how big is an area of nine miles by five miles? Compare it with the size of a local region or something that most people you know can relate to.

What is the Neolithic period?

What does the prefix neo- mean? Can you think of any other words that begin with the prefix -neo?

What are some suggested ways of traversing the island?

If you were to create a similar travel guide about your hometown, what places and attractions would you highlight, and why?

Vocabulary

Give a short definition of each word using your own tone and voice, i.e. don’t copy-paste from your favourite dictionary — yes, I’m assuming you have one 😉

Tide

Produce (noun)

Jackboot

Maritime

Liberation

Mound