Lesson guide · Ages 11–16

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas

Jules Verne

Professor Aronnax, his servant Conseil and the harpooner Ned Land end up aboard Captain Nemo's submarine, the Nautilus, and are carried around the world's oceans: from the seas off Japan to the South Pole and the Maelstrom off Norway. A world-geography lesson, and a submarine imagined long before real ones could do this.

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Learning goals

• Geography. Trace a voyage across the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean; name seas and straits on a world map.
• Science vs fiction. Compare the Nautilus (electric, sodium from the sea, diving suits with air tanks) with real submarines and diving; test the Arabian Tunnel and the open sea at the South Pole against reality.
• Reading. Explore character through place: what Nemo's choice of where to go tells us about him.

45-minute lesson outline

1. 5 min
   Hook. Project the first scene: ships report something huge, fast and glowing. Ask: what could it be? (Aronnax thinks it's a giant narwhal.)
2. 10 min
   Whole-class tour. Play the timeline on the board. Pause on the Nautilus, the Arabian Tunnel and the South Pole. Use the flat Map view (3D | Map, or the m key) to see the whole route.
3. 15 min
   Explore and find (pairs). Pairs do the three tasks on the worksheet on their own devices, using the links below.
4. 10 min
   Science or fiction?. Discuss two or three of the questions. Which inventions came true? Which places are real?
5. 5 min
   Exit ticket. Students take the 'Where was this?' quiz and write their score on the worksheet.

Discussion questions

1. The Nautilus runs on electricity made with sodium from the sea. What powers real submarines today?
2. Nemo uses a secret tunnel to get from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. What connects them in real life, and when did it open?
3. Nemo has cut every tie with the land. Why might someone want to live under the sea? Would you?
4. Ned Land never stops planning an escape, but Aronnax is fascinated by the voyage. Whose side are you on?
5. Nemo gives pearls to a poor diver and gold to islanders in revolt, but later rams and sinks a warship. Hero or villain?
6. Nemo reaches the South Pole on 21 March 1868. Who really got there first, and how?
7. Which places on the route are real, and which are legend or invented (think of Atlantis)?
8. Verne wrote this in 1870. What did he imagine that later came true?

Explore and find

Each link opens the world at one scene. Students read the card, look around the map, and answer.

1. Mobilis in mobili: What is on board the Nautilus? How is it powered?
   Answer

   A library of 12,000 books, an organ and a salon with windows on the sea; electricity made with sodium from the sea.
2. The Arabian Tunnel: How did Nemo discover the Arabian Tunnel? Which two seas does it connect?
   Answer

   By tagging fish in the Red Sea and catching them again off Syria. It runs under the Isthmus of Suez, from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.
3. The South Pole: On what date do they reach the South Pole? How does Nemo know they are there, and what does he do?
   Answer

   21 March 1868. The sun shows at noon and he takes a fix, then unfurls a black flag with a gold N.

Exit ticket: the quiz

8 scenes; students place each one on the map and write their score on the worksheet. Open the quiz →

Where this simplifies

• The route between named places is smoothed: the book lists islands and seas passed, not a day-by-day track.
• The Arabian Tunnel and Atlantis are fiction. The real link between the two seas is the Suez Canal, opened in 1869.
• Amundsen reached the South Pole first, over land, in 1911. The Pole lies on the Antarctic continent, so there is no open sea there.

Worksheet

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