Teacher Discussion Forums

I am stumped as to how to teach a class of 11-12 year olds the future simple tense (will) for making decisions at the time of speaking, e.g. "The phone's rining. I'll answer it."

I can do MPF, but actually introducing and contextualising the grammar topic is proving difficult, as is how to do a good and fun less controlled oral practice of the target language to end the lesson.

Any ideas on how to do this would be greatly appreciated. Just for information, my classes are only 35 minutes long.

Many thanks for your help in advance.

I've got nothing earth-shattering to suggest. I often represent this "will" as a cartoon lightbulb coming on. You get students to tell you something you can pretend you didn't know: that it's their birthday, that the door is open, whatever. You can then respond to this by thinking for a moment before having your spontaneous idea (I'll buy you a present, I'll close it) . Just draw a huge light bulb on the board inside a "Thinks" bubble and have your idea with it above your head. Get them to do the same.

To practise? Well the old picnic game . "We'll have a picnic!" "I'll buy the Coke" I'll carry the table!" or "We'll have a party " "I' ll move the chairs". If the class is huge you'll need a lot of these. Hand a card that says "have a picnic" or "have a party" or "paint the class" to one person in each group of 4 or 5 and retrieve it when each person in the group has volunteeered. Then redistribute the cards, each time to another team member.

Nothing special, but minimum prep and a bit of fun if you don't mind standing under an enormous cartoon lightbulb.