Future tense and the Zodiac

Recently I was asked to do a teaching demonstration in a high school class of Heritage Spanish speakers. The topic of the lesson was practicing the future tense, and I actually found this idea originally as an ESOL lesson but it was easy to adapt for Spanish. For the purposes of this post, however, I will provide the lesson instructions in English so it can be converted back to ESOL or used in other languages. (Original lesson plan can be found here.)

Objective Students will use the future tense to write and interpret horoscopes.

Prerequisites Conjugate and use verbs in the present tense.

Materials ‘Signos del Zodiaco’ worksheet

Introduction Assess what students already know about the key concepts by asking them to define predictions, horoscopes, Zodiac etc. and have students list the typical themes of horoscopes (love, luck, money). Let students read their horoscopes aloud from a Spanish newspaper or website.

Guided Practice Have the students write their own horoscopes on the worksheet for each of the signs of the Zodiac using the future tense, 2nd person.

Independent Practice Have students ask their fellow classmates to share their horoscopes. Students will record the horoscopes they collect from their classmates on the back of the worksheet, using the future tense, 1st person. You can model this process with the students before they get started.

S1: I’m a Virgo. What is your horoscope for Virgo?

S2: My horoscope for Virgo is, ‘You will meet your future love today.’

S1 would record on his worksheet, ‘I will meet my future love today.’

Then the students switch roles.

Conclusion Have students share the best or funniest horoscopes they received!

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When I implemented this lesson, I had a time limit of 30 minutes. During the guided practice, not every student had the opportunity to write a horoscope for all 12 signs. So, during the second part of the activity I told them that if someone asked them for a sign they didn’t have a horoscope for, they could read a horoscope they had written for another sign instead.

Throughout the lesson, I also participated as a “student” in all of the activities as a way to assess the students’ written horoscopes and ability to change the conjugation appropriately. Overall, I was impressed with their creativity and language skills!

This lesson was a lot of fun to implement with a group of lively, active students. Making predictions is something that most students find personally relevant, in fact some of the students continued sharing their horoscopes with each other after the class had ended!