Fortune Telling
Minefields

Have the students form pairs. First one student, then the other will make use of the worksheets to predict their partner's 'future'. To do this the student looks at box *, which corresponds to space * in the crystal ball, and rolls their die (or spins the spinner: If s/he rolls a 3 the student writes 'week' in space * in the crystal ball. Space numbers correspond to box numbers. When they have completed the worksheet, the students swap roles and repeat the process. When this has been accomplished, the first student reads the future of their partner out loud to that student, who then performs the same favour in return. While the students are busy performing this task, take a stroll around the classroom, helping where necessary, and looking to see which students have achieved unusual futures. When all students have finished this task, select students, either at random or those who you've seen have amusing futures, to read their partner's future to the class. Have the student read one sentence at a time, and ask a different student to then translate this sentence into Japanese.

Make sure you demonstrate this task to the class with your JTE first. Fiddle the numbers and make up a bizarre future, which the JTE can translate if the students don't understand. Prime your JTE that their translation skills will be needed for this lesson, as they might want to check some of the words in a dictionary before the class.

Teaching Tip Always give activities where the students have to do something creative (e.g. deciding a group name, creating a question) a time limit. If you don't, the students will follow the example of the Japanese 'Diet' and sit down for some exhaustive discussion of the task at hand, and nothing will get done.

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