Second conditional: What would you do?

Objective & content

Everything to teach the second conditional, in one pack of four parts: slides to project, a three-level practice sheet, a team game and a 10-minute quiz with answers. The pack starts from a short story: a teacher asks her Year 10 class "What would you do if you had one free day?"; Josh would sleep until lunch, Amira would fly to Tokyo, and the teacher answers "If I were you, I wouldn't wait. The homework is for tomorrow!" Pupils meet the structure in the story before they meet the rule. The pack teaches the second conditional for imagined situations (If + past simple, would / 'd + verb), the two orders and the comma, the question (What would you do if ...?), If I were you for advice, could (= would be able to), and the difference with the first conditional: real and possible (If it rains tomorrow, we'll stay at home) against imagined and not likely (If I won a million pounds, I'd buy a house). By the end, pupils can talk about imagined situations, give advice and choose between the first and the second conditional.

Pedagogical guide

The rule is given in Remember! boxes, not left to be deduced; the story and its pictures make the structure easy to notice first. The practice sheet is one A4 sheet at three levels: every page has a Bronze, a Silver and a Gold task, so the whole class works on the same page and each pupil moves up when they finish. The team game is written for teenagers: what they would do if they were invisible for a day or had a million followers, and dilemmas such as finding a wallet with £500 in it on the bus, where teams score a point for a correct sentence and one more for the best idea. Every round opens with a worked example. The quiz gives a mark out of 20. The pack stays at B1+ level: no third conditional and no mixed conditionals; the first conditional comes back only as the contrast. The key page of the practice sheet holds the answers, teacher notes and seven common mistakes (for example "If I would have a free day", "If I am you, I'd tell her" and "If I could to fly"). Spelling is British English.

Suggested procedure

The pack fits two lessons of about 45 minutes. Lesson 1 is Teach it and Practise it; lesson 2 is Play it and Check it. The four parts can also be used alone.

1. (25 min) Teach it (lesson.pdf, lesson 1): show the four pictures and ask "What would Josh do? Where would Amira go?", then read the story together. Read the Remember! boxes aloud; pupils find every would and 'd in the story. A pupil says a problem and the class gives advice with If I were you. Say a sentence: pupils show one finger for the first conditional, two for the second. Then do the six-question quick check with the class. The last slide is for the teacher and is not projected.
2. (20 min) Practise it (practice.pdf, lesson 1): give each pupil the three pages and a start (Bronze, Silver or Gold); correct page by page, with one pupil from each medal reading an answer.
3. (25 min) Play it (game.pdf, lesson 2): make teams and read each round's example together. Show each question, give 20 seconds to write the answer (one minute in round 3, where the class votes for the best idea), then show the answer slide and keep the score. Round 4 is worth double points.
4. (10 min) Check it (quiz.pdf, lesson 2): pupils work alone on page 1; mark out of 20 with page 2.

Adaptations

[S] Start every pupil at Bronze and keep the Remember! slides on screen during the practice and the game. Give them a card with the pattern (If + past simple, would + verb) and do the quiz in two halves.

[A] Send fast pupils straight to Gold and then to the Gold writing task on page 3, where they write about one free day, a million pounds or a day as the head teacher, and read it to a partner, who asks one more question (What would you do if ...?). In round 3 of the game, ask them for two or three sentences instead of one.

Materials & prerequisites

A projector or screen for lesson.pdf and game.pdf (one PDF page per slide, turned with the arrow keys), and paper for the teams' answers. Print practice.pdf (3 pages for pupils; the key page is for the teacher) and quiz.pdf (page 1 for pupils, page 2 is the key), one copy per pupil. Pupils should already know the past simple and the first conditional (If it rains, we'll stay at home).