Future Tense Spanish Lessons
Future tense lessons in Spanish are some of my very favorites. Students have often tackled many different verbs tenses by the time they have encountered the future. As we know in Spanish, all of the different forms, irregular verbs, spelling changes, etc., can be a challenge for even the most dedicated language student. The future tense seems to be a great relief to students.
I normally teach the regular verbs and then the nine irregular on the chart.
We begin by playing el futuro. I put a scarf on my head and pull out a ball I have that happens to glow. I do a fake mini-fortune reading for everyone.
After we have had a little fun with this, I then teach the patterns. I tell them about the things that I think will happen in my future. I then emphasize the yo pattern. Next, I write things about my future on the board. I usually have at least one linguist in my class who is enthusiastic to share their theories. I let them if so. If not, I write then endings on the board.
They then make predictions about their own futures. This is great fun and practice for the future tense in Spanish.
After they share their predictions, we transition to practicing the tú form. They make predictions about their classmates’ futures.
There has been a lot of CI at this point, and the students are very experienced at verbs, so it is easy to transition to writing down the conjugations.
I believe in explicit grammar instruction, but also believe that you can’t lead with it. I love verb charts to do this. They are old school and rote, but work.
The students fill it in on the chart with the yo forms. We do the same for all subjects, but with interaction in between. They seem to find this very rewarding as it will be the easiest that they have encountered thus far.
The same follows for all subjects, creating a context to use the future tense.
More likely than not your text will have some exercises, or you will have some of your own. We often use the filled in charts to practice the future throughout the lesson. We might break it up with fake palm readings for each other or cootie catchers with predictions for the class.
The students extend the class lesson with a written assignment making predictions about the world in the future. They also take a quiz the next class on the future.
The quiz is the same chart they filled in for their notes. I find this creates a much higher level of accuracy early on in any verb tense and gets them using it right away.
Looking for some questions to help students practice the future? They can be used as a guided essay or for a communicative activity. Included is the verb chart and the verb quiz as well.
Here are the ready-made resources to teach the Spanish future tense: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Spanish-Future-Tense-Chart-Quiz-Key-Questions-and-Lesson-Ideas-1648196
Looking for more ideas? Check them out here: http://reallifelanguage.com/reallifelanguageblog/2019/11/04/teaching-a-foreign-language/