Teachers : Giovanna Di Pietro, Filomena Pannarale, Maria Pia Pedone, Maria Antonella Potenza,
Michele Rana, Michael David Romagnuolo.
Title : Plans and predictions
Topic : the future tense (to be going to, will future, present continuous).
Target class : 2B – Liceo Scientifico. This teaching unit refers to a 2 nd class of a Liceo Scientifico composed of 28 students (9 females and 19 males). The class does not have a completely homogeneous linguistic level.
Time of the year : this teaching unit will be introduced in the first half of the first term of the second year of a Liceo Scientifico.
Language level : Students have an A2 linguistic level (CEFR).
Time covered : 6 hours (3 lessons)
References : Clive Oxenden, Christina Latham-Koenig, Paul Seligson (2006). New English File – Pre-
Intermediate Student’s Book . Oxford: OUP, pp. 28-29; pp. 32-33; pp. 130-131.
Materials and Resources required : CD player, textbook, photocopies, pictures, Internet access, IWB.
Spaces : classroom and laboratory.
Previous knowledge : students have already studied the simple present, the present continuous and the simple past. They already know adverbs of time, personal pronouns, and prepositions. Students know the structure of affirmative, negative and interrogative sentences.
Listening : students understand the essential information linked to the personality, daily events, etc.; they perceive the essential information from CDs and videos that deal with personal descriptions, travel, and weather; they understand conversations about future events.
Reading : students understand the essential points of short articles.
Writing : students write simple texts in which they express their own ideas.
Speaking : students talk about personal experiences, past events and share their plans about future events with other people in a simple way.
Formative objectives :
- to improve students’ four language skills;

- to encourage students’ communicative skills in realistic contexts and for specific uses;
- to improve students’ cognitive and thinking skills;
- to encourage students to respect the tasks given;
- to invite students to socialise and cooperate;
- to enable students to use the L2 as a means of interaction;
- to improve students’ knowledge of the L2 (with a focus on vocabulary and communicative functions);
- to encourage students’ use of language in a creative way;
- to enable students to express their feelings, opinions and ideas freely and autonomously in a relaxed atmosphere.
Didactic objectives:
Functions : talking about future events, distinguishing plans from predictions, making promises, using adverbs of time appropriately.
Grammar : use of will future, present continuous for future arrangements, to be going to, negative and interrogative forms of lexical and auxiliary verbs.
Vocabulary : holidays, transports, business, studies.
Methodological approach : communicative/inductive approach, top-down learning strategies.
Teaching activities : individual work, group work, pair work, discussions.
The final project will explore the ideas that have been developed in class. It will consist of a project work on holiday planning. Such work can be organised in small groups. Students will illustrate their projects by means of Power Point presentations to confirm and share the skills and knowledge acquired.
Evaluation criteria : students recognise the global and specific meaning of the text. They express their opinions in a clear, precise and original way. They use lexis and structures of the future tense in a correct and effective way. They understand, select and re-elaborate the fundamental points of a given text in an appropriate and creative way. They link their ideas by means of appropriate conjunctions.
They use technological tools in a correct and personal way to carry out real-life tasks.
The evaluation process continues throughout the teaching unit by taking students’ interests and participation into account. Their learning process and the result of such process are evaluated through a marking scale ranging from 0 to 10.

Warm-up activity : Where are you going?
The teacher introduces the new theme by creating a short brainstorming session about holidays, business, and study. S/he writes down students’ ideas on the IWB and the class creates a mind map related to the topic. Then the theme of transports is introduced by the teacher and it is added to the mind map on the IWB. The students could use the software Mindmeister to create such mind map.
Brainstorming: Holidays, business, study – transports.
After this activity, the teacher organises a pre-reading activity to introduce the theme by making an explicit link to the topic.
Pre-reading activity : When was the last time you went to an airport (or station)? Were you meeting someone, going somewhere, coming back home from a holiday/school? (P. 28 n.1 a).
The teacher presents a text to illustrate different situations connected to travelling experiences.
While-reading activity : p. 28 Airport stories.
Post-reading activity: After the reading activity, the students do exercises n. 1b and 1c.
Then the teacher and students reflect on the difference between to be going to and present continuous by making some examples taken from their own lives and experiences.
The teacher splits the class into groups. Each group starts talking about one of the topics covered
(holidays, work, studies, means of transport) using the appropriate future structures. The teacher moves from group to group, checking for accuracy and fluency.
Finally, students are asked to do a grammar exercise.
In pairs, they should cover the text and try to remember three of Rima's plans and three of Jonathan's plans (Page 28, exercise n. 2a).
Homework : exercises nr. 3a (p. 130) and 3a-b (p.131).

The teacher and the class correct homework. Then the teacher introduces the new topic and grammatical structure (will-future tense) through a series of warm-up activities eliciting the topic and the will-form in an informal way.
Warm-up activities:
The song title When I’m sixty-four (The Beatles, 1967) is written on the blackboard, without giving the class any clues about it. The title is used to introduce the theme inferentially by inviting the student to guess what the title is about. The class discusses individual guesses.
Then, the teacher elicits future expressions without using them explicitly. Adverbs and expressions of time are used to engage students into the conversation, e.g. “What do you want to do in ten years?” or
“Where do you want to be next summer/when you finish school/in five years/when you grow up/when you get old…?”
The teacher writes the answers on the blackboard and comments on them by saying short sentences like
“So you want to be a doctor. You will go to medical school, then. Where do you think you will study medicine?”. By doing so, s/he prompts students to familiarise with will-future forms by means of inductive thinking.
Pre-listening activities:
The teacher reveals what When I’m sixty-four refers to by telling the class that they are going to listen to a song. S/he then asks students if they already know it, if they know who sang it, and what they think the song is about. By asking these questions, s/he reinforces students’ knowledge of past and present tenses and links them to future forms.
A gapped version of the song lyrics is then handed in to each student of the class. Students are invited to fill in the blank spaces by guessing what the missing words might be. In pairs, students discuss and negotiate on their individual guesses, trying to figure out the most suitable choices. Finally, they share their solutions with the rest of the class.
While-listening activities:
The teacher plays the song on the CD player three times.

1 st listening: students are asked to try to check their guesses while listening to the song.
2 nd listening: the song is played again to allow students to concentrate more on lexis and grammar so that they can double-check their guesses and correct what they got wrong or did not manage to understand.
3 rd listening: the teacher and the class discuss about the general content of the lyrics so that students’ predictions on the topic can be confirmed or modified in the light of a more focused listening session.
Post-listening activities:
Photocopies with full song lyrics are handed in to each student. After reading the text together, the class is invited to give their opinion on more specific content. The teacher asks students questions on the theme and the characters (e.g. Who is the main character? How old do you think s/he is? Who is s/he talking to? Is s/he making promises/plans/predictions? About what?) and on more specific issues (e.g.
What do you think ‘the word’ is in this context?) The class discusses.
Break/free conversation
Focus on grammar: students reflect on the new grammatical structures starting from the text. The teacher asks them to underline all the future expressions they can find in the song lyrics and comment on them.
Then, the teacher explains how will-future is formed (affirmative, interrogative, negative forms).
Contracted forms are also illustrated, and their use in different context is explained by providing contrastive examples with long forms (e.g. if you are chatting with friends about your summer holidays, you will say “ I’ll go to the beach”. If you are writing a letter or talking to your teacher about the same thing, you will say “ I will go to the beach.”).
The use of shall is also introduced by referring to the text.
Finally, the use of will after opinion verbs, adverbs and expressions (e.g. I think/I believe) is explored and commented on with the class.
Examples are provided; the teacher asks individual students “What do you think you will do when you are sixty-four?” and elicit comments on every answer (e.g. “What do you think about it? Do you agree?”).
Focus on language use: students are given various pictures of people of different age, sex, ethnicity, wearing different clothes and in different settings. The class is divided into groups, then the teacher

asks one member from each group to choose a random picture and imagine a story concerning that person’s plans and/or making predictions about that person’s future. Cards with expressions/adverbs of time can be provided. If a student picks up a picture of a celebrity, s/he can play the role of that person.
His/her classmates interview him/her about his/her future plans. Finally, each group is asked to report on their activity by writing a short text about it.
Exercises and homework:
Exercises n. 1a-b-c (fill in the gaps, matching) and n. 3a (fill in the cartoons), pages 32-33. Homework is given for next lesson (pages 130-131, exercises n. 3b and 3c).
Follow-up activity – Game (if there is some time left before the end of the class):
The class is divided into pairs. In turn, the two students composing each group act out roles. One is a fortune-teller (disguised as a mysterious gypsy with objects that can be easily be found in class, e.g. a scarf worn as a turban and/or a veil and a shawl) and the other one is a customer. The former has five decks of cards in front of him/her and s/he will read the customer’s future by flipping five cards per session. Each card concerns a specific category (places, people, actions, things/concepts, time expressions). The gypsy has to invent a prediction about the customer’s future by using at least three cards, one per category. The two remaining categories can be left to his/her choice.
Example: the gipsy shows the following cards. Tall man – bike – in 2 weeks – buy – desert island.
S/he will probably choose to invent a prediction based on “tall man”, “bike”, and “in two weeks”, while discarding the two remaining cards. S/he will say something like “You will meet a tall man on a bike in
2 weeks”.
This activity serves the purpose of encouraging students to use new language in a creative and involving way, while learning new lexis through repetition and interactive use in context.

Warm-up activity: speaking activity. The teacher encourages conversation asking, for example:
Do you have any plans for the summer?
“ Are you going to visit some interesting places?”
“ Are you going to go on holiday ?”
This activity helps the students to revise how to express their plans about the future, using the structures and vocabulary they already know. The teacher also introduces vocabulary about the activity of planning holidays.
Where do you prefer to go on holiday? Why? o the city o mountains /countryside o seaside…
 Let’s look at a picture of a city center…

Do you like this picture? Why?
Can you describe it?
The teacher invites students to discuss.
Now let’s make predictions about this picture. If necessary, the teacher clarifies the meaning of
“prediction” by providing some examples.
S/he encourages the discussion using direct questions.
For example: what do you think n. 1 will do tonight? what is going to happen to n.7?
At this point the teacher could clarify the difference between “going to” and “will” to make predictions.
In pairs, students look at the picture and try to figure out what is going to happen, while taking down some notes. In turn, students discuss their guesses with the rest of the class.
 FINAL PROJECT - Decision making/Writing and speaking
Now let’s plan our next holiday!
The students have already talked about their favourite type of holiday. Now they have to work in group to plan one.
The teacher divides the class into groups of 5-6 students. Each group receives a handout with three different possible destinations. They read the material together and the teacher guides the comprehension of the texts. New vocabulary is explained (but not translated).
Then, each group has to discuss and decide what they are going to do next summer. They have to plan a one-week holiday, completing the following scheme.
During the activity the teacher moves around the classroom checking the progress and occasionally – if necessary – providing some help.
Arrival …………………………………………

Destination …………………………………………
Days …………………………………………
Transports …………………………………………
…………………………………………
Accomodation …………………………………………

Activities …………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………..
Departure …………………………………………
At the end, each group talks about their plans. The teacher encourages the use of appropriate future forms to talk about plans and programs. Each student is invited to participate.