Lesson 6 – Life’s what you make it
Warm up
- Ask students what they do in their free time. Ask how many hours of the average day they spend doing it. Ask what they spend most of their time doing. Ask what they would like to spend more time doing. Use this to contrast present simple and would like to: I do this / I’d like to do that.
- Ask them to imagine that they could change their life in some way. Ask them what they would change and what effect it would have. Tell them to talk about it with their neighbour. Check  their ideas.  Use this to practise second conditional : If I could change/do X, I’d do  Y.
- Ask them what they can actually do to change their situation. Tell them to think about it with their neighbour and help each other with suggestions if they can. Say OK, you know what you can change, but what are you going to change? Ask for some intentions.
Main activity
 
1. Tell students they are going to do a ‘life-changing’ activity. Put yourself them to look at the seven aspects of life and check they understand them.
2. Tell them that they are going to interview each other about their lives and make notes. Ask them to write their partner’s name and the date in the centre of the top chart. Do number 1 together as an example. Ask: How many hours a day do you spend with your family? They can choose weekdays or the weekends. Tell the students to write down their partner’s information in section 1 of the chart. Then ask: What do you usually do during that time? Tell your partner. Again, ask the partners to make notes.
3. Tell them to continue the interview for the other six aspects.
4. When they have finished, ask them to look at their charts together and talk about how they would like their lives to be different in a year from now. Tell them to write their partner’s name and the date a year from now in the centre of the second chart, and go around the aspects again, making notes about possible and realistic changes they hope to make.
5. Ask for some examples.
Follow up
- Students look at their own chart and choose the changes they honestly think they can make.
- Write a letter to themselves, dated today, describing the changes they are going to make.
- Put it somewhere where you will see it in a year. You could collect the letters and keep them as long as you can before giving them back