Word of the Day: To Remind, To Remember and Tool to Send Reminders

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Today, this section Word of the Day, has a double aim. On the one hand, it is going to help my students see the difference between these two verbs “remember ” and “remind” and on the other hand, it is going to serve as an excuse for showing you a little tool to help you remember things.
Some of my students have problems seeing the difference between these two verbs, so here’s a written explanation and a short video explaining this difference. I recommend you to see the video first as it’ll definitely serve a double purpose, that of helping you improve your listening ability and at the same time solving your doubts regarding these two common verbs.

  • If you remind somebody about something, you make them remember it. It is a transitive verb, i.e. it always has an object which may be followed by to + infinitive or a that-clause.

                   Remind me to set homework at the end of the lesson.
                   Cristina reminded us that the exam  had been brought forward to Tuesday

When you say that someone or something reminds you of sth/so. you associate it with a memory from your past.

                       This boy reminds me of a boyfriend I had when I was at university .

  • If you remember, you have an image in your mind of a person, place or thing that happened in the past.It is very often used with a to+infinitive

                          I’ll always remember the first time I saw him

                         Remember to buy bread on your way home

In summary:

People ARE REMINDED of things. (it doesn’t appear in their head)
People REMEMBER things. (it does appear in their head)
REMEMBER = Person doing it themselves
REMIND = Other person making someone else remember

Click to do some EXERCISES . Link 1, Link 2

What is a good way to remind  people of things that need to be done without seeming like a nag? Is there a way to politely remind people to do things? Yes, there is: it’s called RemindPost and it is a simple, free service to let you send reminders to people or to yourself  and be notified when they’re done.

It works like this: You email someone a task. If they don’t mark it complete by the time you specify, both of you will be notified.

Hope you find it useful!

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A Game to Practise Spelling with Teens

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Yes, yes… here I am again, struggling to find ways to teach my demotivated students from E.S.O. That’s why I’m constantly surfing  the net  looking for different ways to teach the same things over and over again.

This game can be used to revise vocabulary from the lesson and at the same time practise spelling. It goes like this:

♥ Divide the class in two teams, A and B and ask them to invent a name for their team.
♥Then, divide the backboard into two halves and mark each side  of the board for each team.
♥ On each side of the blackboard draw either:

• a river with stepping stones for students to get across the river. The winner is the team that crosses the river first.   For every correct word they write, mark a stepping stone.


• a ladder. The winner is the team that climbs the ladder first. For every correct word they write, mark a step on the ladder.
• a mountain with climbing points for the teams to climb and put their country’s flag up on the top. The winner is the team that climbs the mountain and puts their country’s flag up first. For every correct word they write, mark a climbing point.
• a daisy. The winner is the team whose daisy is wiped out first. For every correct word they write, wipe out a petal and after all the petals have been wiped out, then wipe out the leaves and the stem until the whole daisy has gone.

♥Call a member from each team up on the board and dictate a word from their vocabulary to them. The students write the word they hear on their side of the board making sure at the same time that the student from the opposite team cannot see what the other student is writing. So cheating is eliminated.

This has proven a very nice and exciting way to check spelling, listening comprehension and pronunciation in a fun way.

Many thanks to Barbara Koziori for this idea

There are also lots of sites on the web to practise spelling with the typical hangman game so if you have a little time to spare ,why don’t you try some of these?

http://www.hangman.no/ divided into categories ( Harry Potter,Countries of the World , Musical Instruments..etc

http://www.playhangmanonline.com/ also divided into categories , namely, music, sports , geography …etc

http://www.englishbanana.com/hangmanhome.html and that’s the place you want to go if you want to play the game with colours, everyday adjectives or household things.

If you are feeling creative or just need a specific category to work with (as is my case) , you might want to create your own hangman. To do this try this site http://www.what2learn.com/. It’s good fun!

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The Writing Process

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We all know how hard it is to write , even in our own language so when the task is writing in a foreign language it seems  like a higher mountain to climb.

Why do students find writing such a difficult process?

The reasons are several and they can vary from student to student. I find that most of my students leave their written assignment until the last minute and writing requires time ; most students ,when they finally get down to writing , don’t really know what they want to say or where to start , there isn’t any  brainstorming process and students, very seldom , write a first draft.These are important strategies to consider , especially when your essay is going to be graded.

This is my small contribution to helping you write better. I only hope you find it useful!

Editing students’ written assignments

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This post is mainly intended for anyone who needs to add comments to a written document. In my case and being a teacher, it has been used to correct essays as more and more often my students seem to be committed to saving the rain forest by not wasting unnecessary paper and sending me their assigned tasks via email instead. I have often used Jing to explain their mistakes but this is an easier way to do so and, in my opinion, as effective.
Of course, I am aware that most of you know how to add comments to a word document so this article is only for those who, like me, have just discovered some of the miracles MS Word can do to help us spice up the always boring task of corrrecting compositions. Before you read further you might like to see an example of what can be done with the Reviewing Toolbar.

 

Where can you bring this toolbar up? Navigate to the View menu bar and select Toolbar and then Reviewing and you will see the Reviewing toolbar appear with a set of icons you’ll have to learn. Then, select an area of the text that you want to comment on and click on the “Comment” icon, type your comment on the red bubble which will appear in the margin. I have found that in MS Word 2003 the red bubble will only show if you’re in the Word Print Layout View or View Web Design .
That way the document looks as it might if I had printed a version of the original and I had marked it up with a red pen.
Another thing you can do is cross out a word(s). To do this you select the word(s) you want to cross out and choose Format/Strikethrough.

Easy, isn’t it? I hope you find it useful !

Lesson Plan: Verb “to be” and Interrogative Pronouns

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It’s never  easy to find stimulating real-life   activities for elementary students but on one of the few ocassions I was watching TV  this week  I saw a TV commercial that  I thought I could use to revise the verb “to be” with my elementary students.
The ad campaign for 212VIP CH is led by the top Australian model Catherine McNeil and accompanying her on the TV commercial is Spanish model Jon Kortajarena. Enjoy!!

And now, let’s concentrate on Interrogative Pronouns with the help of the  invaluable Photopeach. This is for my youngest students .I hope it helps you !!