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“Hey Future Me”
Future-Me-2

“Hey Future Me”



November 14, 2014

“Hey future me” is a video that shows a few children talking to their future selves. They ask themselves some questions, give some advice, and remind their future selves how things were back when they were young. Although it’s meant to be a part of a Emirates NBD advertising plan, the video is pretty inspiring and eye-opening.

 

Hey future HCT students

 

This creative idea can be nicely integrated in our classrooms with our students. Many of them lack the motivation to study and work hard because they haven’t set goals for themselves or pictured a better life resulting from studying at HCT.

Having students think about their future lives can help them realize that they could do something with their lives, if they work for it. It can also help sharpen their critical thinking skills because they need to figure out how things/people around them will affect their lives and to predict a possible future.

 

What can we teach with it? 

 

The idea can be implemented to teach

A2 functions & grammar: describing people, describing similarities and differences

A2+ functions & grammar: describing future plans, expressing obligation and necessity, making suggestions, future tense, will and going to

B1 functions: describing hopes and plans, expressing cause and effect, speculating and making inferences, talking about hypothetical situations

 …and more.

Possible activities

 

You can ask your students to imagine their future selves, and take pictures that represent that life. Then, using iMovies or Keynote, they can animate pictures and add captions/titles as they narrate their prediction of their future lives.

Or, you can ask them to see what people around them expect them to turn out to be. So, they’ll interview their parents, siblings, teachers, friends, etc. and ask them how they think our students’ will be in the future. The product could be a video, an audio recording, or in written form.

future-me-1
You can ask your students to write a letter to their future selves, offering advice and possible suggestions for a better and more productive life. You can go a further step and utilize this website (FutureMe) and have them actually send that letter and have it delivered on a certain date!

You can ask your students to picture their life after x years in regards to 3 life aspects (like work, family, health, social life, etc). And, write an essay discussing each one of those aspects and explaining how they will work on making it happen.

And, if you don’t want to go that far with your students, you can just ask them to picture themselves at the end of the current semester, and how they think this semester will shape their life. They can record that in any form. Then have them go back to that and check if they got there or not. This might also help them set term goals.

 

Things to keep in mind…

 

Your students might feel lost and overwhelmed with the idea of imagining a future life. You might want to guide them with a few questions or life aspects to think about: looks, marriage, education, work, money, etc.

Some students might not feel comfortable with the thought of predicting their own future. You could give them a fictional character with specific characteristics and ask them to predict their lives. It could help if you describe these characters with some problems or transitions they are going through now. This will make it easier for students to predict possible changes in the character’s life.

 

November 14, 2014
Lesson Plans & Ideas
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Sebah Al-Ali

An ESL lecturer whose experience in programming and web development has made her passionate about integrating technology in her classes. She’s mainly interested in how technology can be efficiently utilized to facilitate active learning, develop interactive curriculum, and train teachers.
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