| Last update: May 19, 2025
LESSON OVERVIEW
The main objectives of this updated ESL lesson on making predictions are to:
- revise and practise different ways of making predictions;
- talk about space travel;
- revise the synonyms of the word ‘predict’;
- watch part of a video about interstellar travel.
With this lesson, students practise making predictions in the context of space exploration. The lesson has been updated with a new video (which students watch to 03:42) and some speaking tasks which help students practise making predictions.
WARM-UP AND MAKING PREDICTIONS
This lesson on making predictions starts with a warm-up activity in which students do a short quiz. They need to guess answers to some questions about space. Then, students read some predictions and complete gaps with correct words to create different ways of making predictions (e.g. be bound to, be likely, be plausible, may well). Then, students look at some predictions and discuss how likely they think the predictions are. The predictions cover space-related topics like living on the Moon and Mars, mining asteroids and discovering life beyond Earth. Finally, students discuss questions about their views on space travel.
VIDEO AND SPACE TRAVEL
In this part of the lesson on making predictions, students watch part of the video (to 03:42) about interstellar travel and answer some comprehension questions. Then, they talk about space missions and other topics covered in the video, like generation starships. Next, students read some situations and complete gaps to create synonyms of the word predict (e.g. anticipate, foresee). They also do tasks related to the situations. The tasks include making predictions in different scenarios. For instance, students discuss the likelihood of the success of a mission to Proxima Centauri. Finally, students choose some areas (e.g. space travel technology, space debris, future astronauts) and make five predictions about them. They need to use the language from the lesson. Then, they talk about how likely other students’ predictions are.
WORKSHEETS
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I love it! Thank you for all of your hard work! I discovered this site late last year, and I keep coming back to it, can’t stay away. 🙂
Thanks a lot ❤️ We’re very happy that you like it!
Please do a lesson on the flat earth.
We have a whole lesson on conspiracy theories, including the flat earth one. Just go to https://eslbrains.com/conspiracy-theories-passive/
You might want to update this lesson plan. The topic is relevant for the C1 curriculum, but my adult students will certainly be reluctant to watch the video or answer any related questions.
Awesome topic! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Guys, you are just a brillitant discovery for me) I really appretiate everything you are doing.
Enjoy the content and spread the news about our site 🙂
Great work! Thanks for your effort!
The lesson is great and inspiring. Maybe you could include the script of the video for a teacher’s and students’ convenience.
A transcript is actually available on YouTube. See how to find it easily: https://www.alphr.com/how-to-get-transcript-youtube-video/ . Watch out though as very often it’s auto-generated so it may include errors (that’s not the case with this video, though).
Love this lesson, you guys work very hard. I’m definitely going to upgrade when I get more students. Thanks for all you do.
Thank you 🙂
Hi! The link on exercise 5 brings us to a video about the office rather than SpaceX.
Thanks for alerting us! It was just a simple human error. The video from ex. 5 is the same video as in ex.4. We fixed the PDFs and reuploaded the files.
Amazing! My students loved it! 🙂
So great to hear that! Don’t know if you know but another Falcony Heavy launched (and landed) just a few days ago
Great class, but now Elon Musk is openly white supremacist this lesson is a bit controversial with my students. Maybe a change of video?
Hi Hugh! While I understand that Elon Musk is a controversial person, unfortunately, it seems that he’s the only person seriously doing something about the future of space travel, so it’d be hard to omit him or SpaceX when talking about space. I think the video itself doesn’t include any of his personal statements and focus solely on the topic.
Is it time to remove this neo-nazi from your site yet? When is enough enough? I believe it’s an awful idea to let people normalise him through spaceX or his internet satellites. I love your site but it’s clear what Musk is after those THREE nazi salutes.
I agree! Never ever would I use this lesson with my students now.
Could I make a suggestion please? You say the lesson has been updated. Could you say how somewhere please? I know it’s one I’ve never taught before for whatever reason but it’d be good to know what’s changed.
Hi! Thanks for the suggestion, we’ll think about it and consider where to include such information when we update some of our older lessons 🙂 Regarding this one, we’ve changed the video and the lesson focuses now on interstellar travel, rather than only on SpaceX. There are also more speaking activities. Hope that helps 🙂