One way I practice the future tense is with the game MASH. It is a game I have fond memories playing growing up and many of my students are familiar with. By the end my students are always laughing about the futures that have been created for them while using the targeted future tense. I set aside about 45 minutes to complete this entire activity because I don’t want to rush the steps or run out of time for the interpersonal portion.
The first step is having students write in 4 options for each of the categories. Since the letters of MASH don’t translate well into Spanish, I really just use MASH as the title of the activity and let students pick their housing options along with the other categories. I encourage students to be creative and give them a lot of freedom, for example for the spouse category I let them write names or numbers for how many times they’ll be married. Each student has different ideas of what their future might look like so I let them express that.
Once all the categories have 4 options, they begin to eliminate options until there is only one left per category. I do this by having them draw a spiral on their paper until their partner tells them to stop. They draw a line through the spiral and however many times it crosses the spiral is the number they have to count out. For example if it crosses 5 times, they’ll count and cross out every 5th option. They continue to count and cross out options until there is only 1 option left in each category. Now that their futures are set, they use the options they were left with to write in Spanish about their futures. I do it with the simple future but it would also with the future with ir.
The final step is to interview other classmates once they’ve had a chance to think and write about their futures. I have them interview 2 other students and record the information. I always hear the most laughter and conversations during these interviews because they all love to share the most interesting parts about their “futures”.
As a final whole class piece, I give students the option to share out to the whole class. Usually students want to share the funniest aspect of their future and love to compare with each other.
You can find my MASH activity here on Teachers Pay Teachers.
