Fortune Teller

If you want to spice up your classes when it comes to teaching and practicing tenses, try this idea for practicing future tenses or use it as an inspiration for something else. 

I really enjoyed playing with the fortune teller origami as a kid, but even now, 15 years later, it's still really amusing. I tried out this method in one of my classes and it worked great, so I hope you'll have fun with it as much as I and my colleagues did.

This activity will help your students practice the Future Simple tense. They should work in pairs and tell the future to one another. They will use the fortune teller origami that you can make for them, but the better option would be to let them make it. Here is how you make a fortune teller origami:



After you have folded the paper in the right way, you should write certain things inside of the fortune teller origami. I would suggest writing some names of the cities, people, cars, brands, colors etc. In the middle part of the origami you should write numbers from 1 to 8 and then on the most outer part draw some shapes, or color the parts in different colors. Also, prepare some guidelines or questions for your students to use, which will correspond to the words that you have written in the most inner part of the origami.



Now the students should start to play. One person from the pair has the fortune teller origami in their hands and the other one asks questions. It should look something like this:

Person A asks questions and Person B has the origami.

A: Where will I live in 2015?
B: Pick a color from the fortune teller! (The one on the outer part of the origami.)
A: Yellow.
B: Y-E-L-L-O-W (While spelling the word out loud, this person should open and close the origami for each letter.) Now pick a number!
A: 5.
B: (opens up the most inner part of the origami under number 5) You will live in London.

And now they can swap roles. You can even give them an assignment to come up with a story behind the answer to use the Future Simple even more. (e.g. Person B says: "You will first move to Italy and you will get married there. Your spouse will be from England and then you will move to London.") Some of the other questions to use could be: What car will I own? What will be the name of my first child? What color will my house be? How many times will I get married?



I can assure you that they will have fun, just let them talk and use the tense through the game (almost unconsciously). What do you think of this game? Would you use it in class?


P.S. This blog is approaching its 1000th view and I just wanted to say thank you to all of you who read my posts regularly. :)

Comments

  1. minnieminnminJune 18, 2013 at 7:04 AM

    This is a wonderful idea. I was just thinking of how to use fortune teller to help teach my ESL classes. This really helped spark more ideas for me. Thank you so much for sharing this! Greatly appreciated :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Creative TeacheretteNovember 13, 2015 at 11:23 PM

      I'm really glad it helped, hopefully you managed to use it successfully! :)

      Delete
  2. UnknownMarch 27, 2014 at 3:40 PM

    Great idea! I am modifying this to use it with subjunctive in Spanish to talk about hopes and wishes. Your post definitely helped me put it together logistically! Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Creative TeacheretteNovember 13, 2015 at 11:18 PM

      That's great! I hope you have managed to successfully incorporate this idea into your lesson. :)

      Delete
  3. AnonymousNovember 14, 2014 at 5:09 AM

    I feel happiness to read the content that you are posting.topazvoyance.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. psychichealersharmaMay 1, 2021 at 4:07 PM

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