Maths in English (CLIL)

How can we teach a subject without using children's L1? The answer is: CLIL - Content and Language Integrated Learning.

According to Marsh,

"CLIL refers to situations where subjects, or parts of subjects, are taught through a foreign language with dual-focussed aims, namely the learning of content, and the simultaneous learning of a foreign language." (Marsh, 1994) 

"This approach involves learning subjects such as history, geography or others, through an additional language. It can be very successful in enhancing the learning of languages and other subjects, and developing in the youngsters a positive ‘can do’ attitude towards themselves as language learners." (Marsh, 2000)

In conclusion, it means teaching a subject or a part of it in a foreign language and in doing so enhancing children's confidence and learning of a language.

Today I am going to talk about how can we teach maths through CLIL and I am going to give examples of several activities.

First of all, how can we start a math class? Easy, with a song! Here's an example:

Playing the same song during some days at the beginning of the class will help them to learn it and be able to sing it by themselves. This one is a good song to learn the numbers and how to count in English.

We can start by having in account that number 10 is the basic number and we can work many numbers from there. There are infinite ways to work over this number, but one way could be create a 10 squares grid like that:

This kind of tool can give us many opportunities to work with numbers from 1 to 10. Let's say we want children to count to number 5. We can have images of balloons, ones that we can hook and unhook, using for instance blu-tack. We can hook one by while they count, just using the top line of squares of the grid. When we have the 5 images hooked you can ask them questions, playing with additions and subtractions:

• How many balloons are left if we take two out?
• 3 ballons
• And now, how many balloons  will be if we hook one more again?
• 4 ballons

Start with numbers from 1 to 5 and then add 5 more. You can even use the grade as if it was a dice, as in the example:

Another possibility could be given little grids to children and some stickers. Then you do a dictation, for instance "3 + 1" and they have to stick 4 stickers on their grids. Depending on their level the dictation can be using subtraction or additions, or both.

Another activity we could do for them to learn how to count in English could be asking them to make a cyrcle and then start counting "1, 2, 3, 4" and every time a "5" appears, they have to say another word, for instance "fish". So, it would be something like: 1, 2, 3, 4, fish, 6, 7, 8, 9, fish, 11, 12... If someone makes a mistake it gets eliminated. You can even try to count backwards. Try to always keep their attention on while doing this kind of activities, ask them questions like "Who's turn is it?".

Let's move on to another activity. Use the blackboard to write sets of numbers, for example 325 and 305. Then you can ask them "Which is the highest number?". Then erase that number and ask it again. Try with the smallest as well. Don't use a big gap between the numbers you choose, so it will be a bit more tricky. 

Another possibility with this kind of activity could be write just one number and ask which number comes before or after.

More, write some numbers on the blackboard:

• 409
• 309
• 399
• 499
• 369

then you can ask to children what they have alike, coming to conclusions like if you add 1 they change (499 -> 500) and they all have a "9".

What else can we do? Ask them to tell you a number between 23 and 50. It is up to you if you decide to give a bigger or smaller gap between the numbers.

Why you don't ask them to round numbers. "Round number 42 to the nearest tenth". So they have to say "number 40". If it is a middle number like 35, we always go up, so it would be to 40. If we get a number from 1 to 9, the nearest tenth will be number 10.

Now, let's move to Mental Arithmetic. There are four kinds of mathematical operations: additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions. Give a 10 gaps grid to each student, explain they will have to write ONLY the resoult of the mathematical operation you ask them on each gap, not the operation itself, just the resoult. For them to be easier, you can start by saying "the first five operations are going to be subtractions". Make sure everybody understood you and if they don't, make them speak English by saying "can you repeat it, please?" or "I don't understand you". It is so important to have in account that not everybody have the same level, that's why we can allow some of the students to write down the operations before the result.

When correcting, ask them "Who wants to say the first answer? Rise your hand.". Then tell them to write a tick if they got it right or a cross if they got it wrong, and then write the right answer beside or below it. Repeat those instructions as many times as necessary. When they finish correcting, make them count how many ticks they got and write the resoult. To finish with, ask them why they got it wrong. To make sure they answer in English, you can write these kind of sentences in labels so they can read them if they don't know how to say it.

The last activity I am going to talk about are the mathematical problems. Using the same dynamic as we do on "Mental Arithmetic", we ask them questions through an oral dictation, but this time they don't have to just answer a number, but a number and a word. Depending on the level, you can give them already that word writed down on the paper, or make them write everything by themselves. When doing that kind of activity, you have to repeat the questions as many times as necessary, making sure they understood what you said. Encourage them to ask you questions like "How do you write "books"?".

When correcting, ask who wants to say the resoult of the problem, but first read the question to remind them what was it about. Then you can ask to whoever answers "how did you get to that result?". Always try to encourage them to talk in English, help them with the vocabulary if necessary. Use the same "ticks and cross" method and at the end make them count how many ticks they got, ask which ones they got wrong and why. Answers can be something like that:

• "Because I didn't hear you well"
• "Because I didn't count well"
• "Because I didn't have time to answer"

English lessons are good for children, they learn vocabulary, grammar, etc. But I truly believe that with CLIL they go further than with just the simple English lessons. You give the oportunity to children to learn another language while learning a common subject, used to teach in their own L1. In this post we have seen some activities we can use when teaching Maths through that method. Maths can be a good subject to start with, as the numbers are something that they learn fast and from there you can build sentences and introduce more vocabulary.

CLIL is a great possibility for children to extend their language skills. They learn new vocabulary and they practice every day. The best way to learn a new language is practicing it, so CLIL gives the oportunity to every student to do it.

Describing and comparing

When doing an activity you always have to find something relevant and meaningful for children. Today I will talk about how children describe draws or pictures.

First of all, when starting a new topic, you will need loads of drilling and also patience! You can introduce a topic from a poem, repeating and repeating. You can start by reading and showing them the poem itself and then from the words do little draws to give more meaning and make them understand it better. Another resource could be do mimic and/or start with a brainstorming.

When we already have chosen a topic and work a bit over it, you can ask them to describe you a picture, for instance, of a landscape with animals like that:

Let's say they are studying jungle animals, that picture can be kind of meaningful for them. While describing they can say "one giraffe", "there is one elephant"or just say "one elephant", using more or less grammar depending on their knowledge and the vocabulary they have learned before doing the activity. But what can be even more meaningful for them? Letting them to draw an animal, their own animal. You don't need to give them rules, just let them draw the animal they decide and however they want to do it. After that, you can ask them to compare their own draw with their classmates ones. While they compare the draws they will already be doing a description and empowering their language skills.

For example, if they have a cocrodile and an elephant, they can differenciate the colour, the size, what they eat, where they live, etc. Here's an example:

Lion
Paula, 5 years old

Giraffe
Ethan, 5 years old

We have here a Lion and a Giraffe, they can start by saying who is taller than the other, the color, the what they eat, where they live... there are many possibilities.

As I said before, it is so important giving them meaningful things to work on and they will always get much more motivated describing and comparing their own draw than a simple picture.

Teaching language skills

When we talk about language skills, we are talking about speaking, listening, writing and reading. These four skills are connected to each other because we learn to speak because we first listened. When we start writing, we write the words as we hear them, but if we don't know how to read the letters, we can't write.

That skills can be classified depending on the direction of the information, if you are projecting it or recieving it. They also can be classified by oral, speak and listen, and written, write and read.

In this post I am going to explain how children learn L1 and how to introduce an L2.

Children start talking around the age of two, not always, but before that, they already start by saying some random words or sentences. When learning L1, it is so typical as babies to hear what people say and copy or repeat it. There is a period called "Silent Way", where children just listen and don't talk until suddenly a day they begin to speak. During that process children collect words and expressions that they will eventually use when start to speak. Not every children goes through that.

At the age of 3 or 4, children start recognizing some letters. It is so typical to start recognizing their names, sometimes, not because they know the letters, but because they have seen it writed down many times that they know that in there it says their name.

Now we ask ourselves, how we introduce L2 to children? There are many answers to that question, but I am going to suggest a few possibilites. You can start teaching an L2 by listenint to songs, watch videos in that language or easy as speaking to them in that language. At first it may be weird for them, but they will eventually get use to it and will be catching and learning words day by day.

During the learing of a second language, there are two steps that we all go through:

• Passive knowledge: when we can understand a language but can't project it
• Active knowledge: when we can understant a language and project it

When teaching an L2 we don't have to be in a rush, it is a long process, even longer than L1, because they don't hear it everyday and everywhere as they do with L1. That's why we have to be constant and patient. 

Planning a project

We all have heard someone talking about "projects in the schools" or even ourselves have participated in some. But, what is a project and how can we plan a great project?

To plan a great project we have to start by asking ourselves some questions:

• What will be the aims of our project?
• What competences will it develop?
• What concepts will the students learn?
• How will you introduce the topic?
• What stage will the project follow?
• What materials will you need for each stage?
• What assessment criteria will you apply?
• What material, activities and/or worksheets, etc. do you intend to use?

In this post I will try to answer that questions and in doing so explain how to plan a great project.

Well, first of all, we have to ask ourselves what we want the children of our class to learn with that project. Let's say we want to do a project about farm animals, so we have to establish some aims that we want the children to reach during and at the end of the project. One example could be, learn about five different animals that lives in farms, what they eat, how they reproduce, etc.

The competences and concpets will be so related with the language and curricular concepts, which we would need to check while preparing the project. A good way to structure a project could be do a chart like we use for a micro teaching project.

After that we have to plan which stages the project will follow, the material you will need for each stage, material, plan activities, etc... It is so important to be ready before starting any project, because when it's on, you have to keep going.

Finally, you have to decide which assessment criteria will you apply. That is so related to the aims, competences and concepts, because in this part, we will see if children have really reached all the aims we wanted them to reach and if they didn't, see which their progress have been.

When you have already established everything we have said, you have to decide how to introduce the main topic to children. There are many tools you can use, but one of the most encouraging may be the magic box, because you keep them wondering what is that is going to come off from there. Other easy ways to introduce the topic could be a explain a tale or playing a song.

Before starting the project, you can use some technique to create little groups to work whenever it is necessary during the project. Depending on what you plan on doing, you can creat more little or bigger groups. I believe the ideal would be to work in pairs, little group, individually and altogether. We should try to find activities where we could fit that kind of groups, so children can see different ways of working.

When doing a project, always keep children guessing. Challenge them with questions, make them show what they already know, explore as many possibilities as it comes to your mind to keep their attention on all the time.

To finish with, I would like to say that we always have to listen to the desires children have, what they are interested on learning and what motivates them. If they are not motivated or interested, they will not do great and won't enjoy either. A project is not just a single activity, it is a set of activities that are done progressively in more than one day, so it is so important to keep children motivated.

Magic Box

The Magic Box is a wonderful resource you can use either in Early Childhood or Primary, because children always get excited about it. You bring a box to the class and put inside it something related with a topic you want to introduce and talk about with your students, for instance a jigsaw or some pictures.

Let's say we want to talk about elephants. We can start by bringing the magic box to the classroom and tell them a little story of how this box appeared in your office and inside of it there is a jigsaw and you need some help to solve it. You can work on an story or not also depending on the age of the children you are showing it to.

When children already have solved the jigsaw and know the animal we are going to talk about, we have to ask them questions. It is so important to know what do they know about it and what do they want to know, reason why we need to ask many and different kind of questions. Here are some examples:

- Any of you have ever seen an elephant before?

- Is it a big or a tiny animal?

- Which colour elephants are?

- Where do they live?

- What do they eat?

By doing that exercice, you are introducing new vocabulary related to elephants an animals in general.

As I said, we can use a story or also a song to introduce that activity. To talk about the parts of the body of the animal, we can also use a jigsaw, but this time we can make them colour a picture of an elephant and then cut some parts of it and then they will match it and discover and work with it the parts of the body of an elephant. We can use other tools like flashcards as well.

Dumbo maybe would be a nice film to show them, at least some part of it, to show them a different way of living of an elephant apart from the ones who lives in the jungle or the zoo.

To finish with, they can do a mural to hang in the classroom where they can draw some elephants, the jungle, what they eat, some sentences related to elephants, etc.

I believe that the magic box is a nice resource and a nice way to introduce a topic. The most important thing about introducing a new topic to a classroom is to call children attention, if they are not interested or motivated, they won't follow and they won't want to participate because they won't care. That is why it is so important to listen to them and know what they want to learn.

What do we know about...

Whenever you want to introduce a new topic in a class, you always have to try and make children participate and share their knwoledge. How can we do it? Easy as asking them questions. Make them be who guides your questions, you can prepare some basic ones before the class like:

- What do you know about that topic?

- What would you like to know about it?

Then go further from what they answer. For instance, if we are talking about transports, ask them for instance how many transports do they know, when they answer, then ask them to organize them by the way they travel: air, sea, road... There are infinity of possibilities depending on the item you choose to work on. It is so important to ask as many different types of questions as we can.

As a future teacher to be, I truly believe it is so important to let children participate. Lessons don't have to be about the teachers but about the students. We have to let them participate and share as much as they know. We have to go from that basis to what we want them to learn.

Ways to create groups

When we think about making a group in class we may tend to separate it in two parts, ask kids to get in pairs or get in groups by themselves. What is the problem about that? That kids always get the same partner or the same group and sometimes we get kids left alone. How can we avoid that? It is easy, we can make the groups by playing a game.

One of this games could be to give every kid a number from 1 to 4. They will have to remember that number. Check that everybody is hearing and understanding you, that is an important point. When everybody has a number, you ask them to get in groups by the number they got.

Another way could be, after practicing some kind of vocabulary, let's say class material vocabulary, shapes and lenght, you ask kids to get into a circle and give every kid an object. They can't show what it is to the others. One by one they will have to descrive the object they have and when everybody is finish, they will have to guess who else has the same object as them. When they have discovered, they will have to get into groups and explain to the others what they have. Let's say, if one of the groups have sharpeners, they will have to say "our object is use to sharp the pen". The rest of the class will have to guess what object it is.

There are many other ways and games to creat groups, but these are a couple of examples. Even tho they are a bit long to do, I believe they are a nice and different way to create groups and everybody gets to participate.

What does a teacher needs to become a great teacher?

There are many things that a teacher needs to know about the children she or he is looking after on its class. First of all, you have to know about the background of every kid; its family, social enviroment, etc. That way, teachers know better how to treat every kid and as everyone is different needs to be treated different. 

It is so important to gain children's respect and if we have a good structure the respect, attention, values... will come along. Start for listening how students feel, it is important to talk about it.

Inside of the classroom we need to create a nice atmosphere, find tools to keep students attention and motivated by knowing what they are interested on learning, achive a good atmosphere and being creative. It is also so important to be organized and preseverant. Also, anytime we are about to start doing something new, we have to be clear on the instructions and make sure everybody understood.

These are only a couple of aspects that a teacher needs to know and have under control to become a great teacher and to have a good management of the class. Many students look at their teachers either as their heros or their worst enemy, let's try on being their hero. Every kid needs a hero, every kid needs to feel safe, useful and happy and it is our responsability to make them feel that way when they are in the school.

We have big responsability, we have the future on our hands. Let's do it great.

How to call kids attention?

Many people relate school with doing school sheets and there sometimes parents are not happy if their children don't bring home an amount of these sheets at the end of the school year. As an Early Childhood Education Student I truly believe we have to go further away from there. Children won't pay attention after the second sheet they do and they will disconnect. We need to find and apply new methods to call their attention and motivate them. Kids don't have to be doing homework all the time, they need to do different things and we have to listen to them to know what they are interested on do and let them choose.

The point of all of this is that whatever they are doing, sometimes they need a break to disconnect and reestart. There is one easy tool that we can use as teachers to keep children motivated: icebreakers. They are little games that are used in the middle of lessons or if they are doing a tough work. Usually they are games that get everybody participate but they also can be as simple as a little song. Here is an example:

One, two three, look at me.

Four and five do the jive.

Six, seven, eight, concentrate.

After hearing it a couple of times, when you start saying it, they will keep going and saying it themselves. That is an easy way to claim kids attention and make them connect and concentrate easily and fast so you can keep going whit whatever you were doing in the class. This example could be well used in moments of an amount of noise.