Something fun! and something to have fun with! 
These classroom timers are a nice alternative to the normal sandtimer that I have downloaded to my ipad.
The website is called http://www.online-stopwatch.com/ and it offers a bunch of fun timers for the classroom, including timers you can use when two teams are competing against each other.
Click on the pictures and have fun!
I just love this useful tool to record audio. I love it for many reasons:
♥You don’t need to register and it is free
♥ It is very easy to use
♥You can record yourself or upload a recording
♥ It can be easily shared or embedded in a blog. It also gives you an url that can be sent via email.
Listen to me saying hello
Audio recording and upload >>
ha,ha,ha! No Comments!
I don’t really think I have ever studied lists of verbs followed by infinitive and/or gerund but I really don’t think I should be telling this to my students.
I always claim that English grammar is easy, especially when compared
to the Spanish grammar, but it gets a bit messy when it comes to verbs followed by infinitive or gerund.
You see, the easy thing to say is that some verbs are followed by infinitive (promise to go) and some verbs are followed by gerund (can’t stand ironing). But then we find that, some other verbs are followed by infinitive or gerund with no change of meaning (start to study/start studying)and some others are followed by infinitive and gerund with a change of meaning (stop to smoke/stop smoking) and if this were not enough, some verbs are followed by infinitive with to (offer to help) and some others by infinitive without to ( make me study). Some verbs are followed by gerund but if there is an object pronoun in between the verb and the gerund, then the gerund becomes infinitive (recommended reading / recommended her to read) … amazing, isn’t it?
Now, you can begin to understand why I have never studied lists of verbs but relied on my intuition when trying to decide on the right structure.
I hope these exercises will help my students.You are welcome to do them.
Unfortunately , it is not very often that I get students to contribute to the blog with an article , but this does not apply to Patrick M. Hyyryläinen , who I didn’t have to ask twice and readily accepted the challenge. Sorry it took me so long to publish and many thanks!
Now , aren’t you dying to read his story? It starts right below
I was sitting in the train.
It was like any other day; I took the train to school at 5:45 AM.
The winter had started and it was completely dark outside.
The trip takes 55 minutes. I decided to spend the time usefully so I took a nap.
Suddenly I woke up because my phone was ringing. I answered it and it was my mother. She told me that I needed to run, as fast as I could, and then she hung up.
I was stunned, of course, because my mom had sounded like she was trying to get away from something, but also because it happened so fast, I didn’t even have a chance to ask her what had happened before she hung up.
I was trying to figure out what had made my mother so afraid, when I noticed that a man was looking at me from the other side of the train. I could see that he was talking to a device that looked like the ones secret agents use in films.
Then it came to me like a lightning from a blue sky, that it could be why my mother was so afraid; perhaps the government had found out some dark secret about my mother or our family, and now they were catching us, one by one.
That last part made me realize a very important thing, I was a part of that family, so if my theory was correct, then they will be trying to catch me as well. I had to think fast so I pulled the emergency break in the train and as soon as the train began to stop, I got up from my seat Continue reading To Dream or Not to Dream…