World cup CLIL and teaching maths

Lots of things have been happening this (academic) year, which is why the CLIL reflections blog has been dormant. In September 2013 I started as an independent education consultant and have been giving CLIL courses in the Netherlands as well as in other countries, from  Denmark to Catalonia  and Kazakhstan. And I see to my shame that our last blog post was in May 2013.

My colleague Jason Skeet is also going to pastures new and will be returning to the UK to work at the Norwich City College. I will miss you, Jason! So I want to breathe some new life back into the CLIL reflections blog with a new background and a mid-year 2014 resolution to write something useful for my readers about CLIL every month.

 

CLIL and maths

As a pre-(northern hemisphere) summer topic, I have chosen the (southern hemisphere topic) world cup, or CLIL and teaching maths. Some maths teachers struggle with teaching the language of maths and often ask me questions like, “How can you do CLIL activities in maths?”, or “We can talk about Pythagoras in maths – but how can we bring more culture into the maths classroom?” Or they say, “There isn’t really any language in maths, is there?”. Of course in some ways, these maths teachers are right: it is much easier to create of CLIL activities in the more ‘text-heavy’ subjects like history, geography or biology, which provide readymade text material and language in their course books. But more and more maths teachers are catching on and creating great maths lessons which include language (the C of communication) and (the C of) culture.

Luis Suarez and probability

During the 2014 World Cup, I was giving a CLIL training course at Visser ‘t Hooft Lyceum in Leiden. Michiel Hendriks - a creative maths teacher - talked about his maths lesson. Our workshop was a couple of days after the football match in which Luis Suarez bit Giorgio Chiellini in his shoulder: food in itself for discussion with CLIL learners. Michiel spotted this video, entitled Suarez takes bite out of Swedish bookmaker. Apparently, a 24-year old Norwegian man, Richard Helmersen, bet 100 kroner (€12,50, £10 $16US) that striker Luis Suarez would bite someone during the World Cup. The Norwegian managed to win 17,000 kroner (about €2500, £2,000, $2,850 US): an online bookmaker had offered odds of 175/1 that Suarez would bite someone again during a game in Brazil.

 

Language in maths

Michiel just happened to be teaching the topic of probability in his CLIL maths lessons that week. And the title of the video, Suarez takes a bite out of Swedish bookmaker was a good excuse to teach the idiom take a bite out of something.

As a starter, Michiel asked his students to answer these questions, thus giving them a reason for viewing the video and working on their listening skills:

1. How much money, in Swedish kroner, did the man win?
2. How many kroner did he bet?
3. How does this relate to the odds given?
4. What is the man going to spend it on?

Michiel was aiming to teach this rule: The probability of an outcome equals the number of ways the outcome can happen, divide by the total number of possible outcomes.  And through the clever example of the bet on Suarez’ biting Chiellini, he could bring the topic to life, linking it to real life and make it relevant to the class, since probably all of his students were following the World Cup. Students could talk about how we work out the chance that something will happen in maths.

Michiel then showed his students (on 30 June) the odds of who might win the world cup:

 

 

 

 

 

 

He pointed out that the odds of Argentina winning the world cup are four to one. He told his students, “You, as a punter (a person who bets) could put money on Argentina winning. If that happens, the bookies will have to pay you four times the amount of money you put on Argentina winning. What the bookmaker means by this is that in four out of five situations Argentina will lose and in one out of five situations Argentina will win. This is called the chance. In the chase of Argentina, they have a one in five chance they will win."

Again, he checked understanding of this input through a few questions, clarifying the difference between the words odds and chance, which are important concepts here.

1. The odds of Germany winning the world cup are___________
2. This means the chance of Germany winning is about a ______________________
3. What are the odds of Holland winning the world cup?
4. What is the chance Holland will win the world cup?
5. If you bet 25 euro’s on Holland winning, and they do, how much would you win? Remember to write down your calculations.
6. Chances pop up everywhere. Try to think up 3 other examples. Give your examples in a sentence.

The language of probability in maths

Of course, maths uses numbers for describing probabilities, written as fractions, decimals or percentages. It also use percentage scales, starting at 0 (impossible) and ending at 1 (absolutely certain). We use phrases like, “It’s likely that it will rain tomorrow”, or “It is impossible to find a human being who is more than 3 metres tall,” or “It’s unlikely I’ll see her tomorrow. I think she’s on holiday in Brazil.” We use language to make judgments about how probable an event is, use the future tense with “will” and words like (very) likely, (extremely) unlikely, even chance. probably, possibly, impossible, maybe. And in order to talk about probability, Michiel’s students needed and used this language. And trawling the net, I found this PowerPoint slide on the Times Education Supplement site which encourages students to talk about probability scales, neatly demonstrating a lot of the language related to probability. 

 

Who says maths doesn’t use language? I leave you with two questions:

1. How probable is it that you think a little differently about teaching language in maths after this blog entry?
2. On the probability scale from 0 to 10, how probable is it that Michiel’s students will remember his lesson?

 

 

 

 

 

Lesson Reflection in CLIL

We can think of a CLIL lesson as a three course meal: an appetizer that energizes the learners at the start; the main course activities that hit all the key learning objectives for the lesson; and a final dessert that reflects on the lesson by consolidating what's been learnt.

It’s essential to plan for reflection at the end of a lesson in order to get feedback on the lesson — have the objectives for the lesson actually been achieved? For CLIL, wrapping up the lesson can be an opportunity to reflect on both the learning of subject content and also of language. It can also be an activity that provides another opportunity for learners to produce spoken output, sharing their ideas and reviewing their learning with each other.

I often get asked by teachers for ideas for lesson reflectors. Here then are ten ideas for lesson reflectors in CLIL.

• Select a group of students to give a summary of the lesson as a short presentation in front of the class.

• Ask a group of students to create a ‘still frame’ of a key idea from the lesson (a still frame is a frozen tableau). The other pupils have to discuss what the still frame shows.

• Ask students to write an important question to ask the rest of the class to test their understanding of the lesson. Students can share and discuss the questions in groups.

• Use a speaking/writing frame:

“The best part of the lesson was…”

“The most difficult part of the lesson was…”

“The most interesting part of the lesson was…”

• Put the questions you are going to want answered at the end of the lesson on the board at the start of a lesson. Draw attention to these questions at relevant moments during the lesson, and then ask pupils to answer them (perhaps through a small group discussion) in the last ten minutes of the lesson.

• Ask student to write down three facts that they have learnt in a lesson and share these with a partner or in a small group.

• Ask pupils to complete a list of ten keywords from the lesson with each word put into a sentence to show they understand its meaning. These are shared with a partner or in a small group, everyone adding to their lists.

• Ask students to design an exercise for the next lesson as a follow up to work done in the lesson.

• Get students in small groups to design one screen of a Powerpoint presentation (they do this on a large sheet of paper) that uses a heading and bullet points to sum up what they learnt in the lesson.

• Ask pupils to work in small groups to make a set of word cards drawing on the key vocabulary from the lesson, with definitions on other cards, then use the cards to compose sentences that describe the main ideas from the lesson and/or ways in which ideas in the lesson could connect with other subjects.

Finally, how about getting pupils to complete a feedback form for the teacher: what went well (www) and even better if (ebi)?

Working with resistance to CLIL

When we do training sessions at schools there are some recurring issues about CLIL that come up. Here are three such concerns and the sort of responses that we try to give.

1. “For my students, listening to me speaking English is CLIL enough.” “I just teach the same as I always did in my Dutch lessons: my students like listening to me and my stories”

This idea might be called the ‘immersive’ argument. In other words, exposing students to lots of English in the classroom when they listen to their teacher is enough for the students to then learn through it. The problem with this idea is that the students in Dutch bilingual programmes are coming into these programmes at secondary school level. This means that they are too old to learn a language simply through exposure like this. Do note, though, that rich exposure to the target language from various sources and the teacher always speaking English are both vital ingredients of an effective CLIL lesson.

In order for teenagers to learn a language - and in a CLIL context that also means learning the language of a specific subject as well as more general academic language - they need to have their language learning supported. Students need to be encouraged to experience and experiment with the language by producing output - both spoken and written. This means an effective CLIL teacher can:

– Identify the language that students will need for a specific lesson;

– Identify which language skills - reading, listening, watching, speaking, writing – students will use in the lesson;

– Identify what specific support learners will need to develop those language skills;

– Identify what the particular language learning aims for a lesson will be.

2. “CLIL takes too much extra time.”

It’s true that developing new student centred lesson materials can cost more time for a teacher, but here are some points to think about regarding this issue:

– Once a teacher has made some materials, they can use them again next year or with another class;

– Student-centred or active tasks can often increase the motivation of students in lessons;

– Active lessons encourages more positive communication between learners and teacher within the classroom;

– It’s possible to design assignments in which the students make materials for lessons themselves. For example, they create their own questions for each other, or build board games focused on learning about a specific topic that can then be played by other students.

Finally, it has to be stressed that there can be ways to “CLIL-up” lessons that do not require extra time for a teacher. Increasing the amount of time of “student talking time” (STT), where students talk with each other, for example, is really just a matter of a teacher shifting focus in their lesson planning so that time is planned for speaking tasks. As a result, there is less “teacher talking time” (TTT). To do this, get students to ask questions to each other, read aloud to each other instead of to the whole class, talk about the lesson topic, an image or intriguing question with each other in pairs or in small groups. Aiming for a higher amount of STT does not need to cost lots of extra preparation time for the teacher.

3. “Becoming a language teacher, on top of being a subject teacher, is a step too far.”

When we talk about a subject teacher becoming a language teacher, we do not mean that they become a language expert. Clearly, that role is for a language teacher – in the case of TTO in The Netherlands, the role of the English teacher is to provide the kind of detailed focus on, for example, grammar or language skills that students need. However, being a language teacher as well as a subject teacher in a CLIL context does require a teacher asking themselves, sometimes, some basic questions such as these:

– What are the language aims for my lesson?

– How can I select varied input to expose my students to different ways of talking about the lesson topic?

– How can I sometimes involve the students talking and/or writing about lesson topics?

– How will students use language in the lesson?

– What specific kinds of scaffolding (or support) do they require?

We don’t expect, for example, a history teacher to start teaching in detail about the different past tenses in English in their lessons or a science teacher to teach the different forms of conditional sentences when talking about scientific hypotheses. However, we ARE suggesting that a history teacher needs to be aware that students need to use the past tense in speaking and writing about their subject. Similarly, a science teacher needs to know that there are a lot of conditional forms used in science. Moreover, teachers need to be aware that students will need support to do this. This might be support from the English teachers or, if they feel confident enough, from tasks that the subject teacher creates.

Becoming aware of the various ways of supporting language learning is the challenge here for subject teachers. And it’s not just a matter of giving a list of vocabulary. Teachers can be aware of language at three levels:

– How to activate vocabulary at a word level;

– How to scaffold at a sentence level using activities such as substitution tables or gap fillers;

– How to work with speaking and writing frames and tasks to guide students’ output at a text level.

Getting Learners Speaking in English

Getting learners to speak English regularly in lessons is one of the challenges for TTO teachers. In order to use speaking activities for a CLIL classroom it’s important to focus on the mechanisms underpinning different types of speaking task, so that teachers can then create their own versions of these activities. Here then are three types of speaking activity with some suggestions for variations of them in practice – however, the important point is to appreciate the underlying mechanism motivating communication.

Communication regulators

Communication regulators provide a structure to a discussion amongst students. They are useful in a CLIL lesson in order to equalize communication amongst the members of a group and to give everyone an opportunity to speak. It is also a good idea to give learners time before the discussion to think about what they want to say.

Learners are motivated to speak because the rules for the task require their active involvement and also provide a framework for their contributions. Scaffolding (or support) for the task might be needed, such as a speaking frame which models possible sentences or phrases that could be used. Here are some variations of communication regulators:

Talking Chips
Place students in small groups. Each student is given a chip (for example, they can use a pen). If someone wants to talk, they must place their chip in the center of the table. You cannot then talk again until everyone has placed his or her chip on the table. When everyone has used their chip they can be retrieved and anyone can talk again by placing the chip on the table.

Response Mode Chips
Students are given a number of different chips that each refer to a specific type of response that they can then make in a discussion (for example, asking a question, giving an idea, giving praise, responding to an idea etc.). If a student wishes to speak they must place the appropriate chip on the table, representing their response mode.

Timed Turns
No one can talk for more than a minute and there is a timekeeper on each turn.

Hot Seat
One person is placed in the hot seat and must answer questions on a given topic by the other members of the group. They can only listen and ask questions. Students take it in turns to be in the hot seat.

Information gaps
An information gap is based on creating a situation in which learners need to communicate with each other in order to get some specific information from each other, and therefore to close the gap! The gap might be based on finding out something that someone else already knows (so activating prior knowledge), or the activity might be based on the teacher setting up the gap by giving certain information to a learner that another learner needs to get.

Some ideas for information gap activities in CLIL lessons:

Find Someone Who…
Students are given a list that might be a list of: personal information, facts relating to a topic, opinions about a given topic. They then need to walk around the classroom asking each other questions to find a person that can answer a specific item on the list.

Picture Pairwork
Two students each have a picture of the same scene or image, but each picture has several (small) differences. The students need to communicate to each other in order to discover these differences. Good for learning and testing out new vocabulary and for practising question sentences. The pictures can be related to specific subject content - for example, landscapes in Geography.

Talking Into Drawing
An activity for pairs. One student has a picture and must describe that picture to their partner who then makes a drawing of what they are being told. This activity can be used to practice the use of connectives (first, then, next) and adjectives. This activity can be connected to subject content – for example, describing a diagram or illustration in a science lesson.

Pyramid discussions
Sometimes referred to as ‘think/pair/share’, this type of speaking task is structured in three phases, beginning with the learner thinking on their own, moving to a phase in which they discuss ideas with a partner, to a final phase in which ideas are shared as a class.

The first two stages are important for CLIL because they offer safe wait time to think through ideas and an opportunity to rehearse the language they need before a whole class plenary. CLIL teachers may also need to identify the specific scaffolds (support) that students need for the task. For example, they may need a list of words relevant to the topic or model sentences that can be used in their discussion. As a variation, think, pair, square puts students into groups of four to share their ideas rather than a whole class plenary. This might be a good way to help prepare students for whole class discussions. It also gives the teacher more opportunities to monitor and observe language use in the different pairs and groups.

Another variation of this uses a ‘placemat’ for the first two stages, a large piece of paper on which learners write down their ideas in response to a question or problem. The placemat can then be rotated so that everyone can read each other’s ideas. A new question is then needed to synthesize the learners’ ideas at the small group stage in some way before going into a whole class plenary discussion.

Websites for CLIL

Another great resource for CLIL, this time from Cambridge ESOL.

They have produced a series of booklets (that are free to download) aimed at subject teachers: Maths, Science, History, and Geography. Each booklet provides a clear overview of CLIL in relation to the specific subject, and, best of all, offers a model lesson with resources.

Cambridge ESOL CLIL materials

Scroll to the bottom of the page for the free materials.

Websites for CLIL

CLIL websites

Colleagues have been sending me links to websites for CLIL during the past month, so I thought I would share some of them with you.

CLIL content materials

An email from the CLIL Research network included a reference to website of CLIL content materials, published by the Andalusian regional ministry of education. There are 130 examples of CLIL lessons, including over 4000 pages of materials, designed for use in CLIL content classes (social and natural science; mathematics; music; sport; technology and art), at primary and secondary level and in three languages: English, French and German.

Each unit is organized around a specific content topic and covers 6-10 classroom sessions. The units open with an outline of content, linguistic and competence goals and each is accompanied by a teacher guide. The units were designed by experienced CLIL teachers with methodological and linguistic support from a team led by Francisco Lorenzo and including Pat Moore, researchers at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide´s Learning Research Centre Icárea. You can find these materials online here. 

Without knowledge of Spanish, it’s not very easy to find the materials, so here is the trick. Click on this path:

English > Menu > drop down menu Acceso por material > click on a subject. The rest is in English.

Or ask a friendly Spanish-speaking colleague to help you access the materials! I am interested to know what you think of this site: Is this material really “CLIL”?

All things CLIL

The second tip is from Deborah Wust, a biology teacher and textbook author from Marnix College in Ede. She has created a “yurl” here at  which includes an “All things CLIL” page. Worth browsing through.

Atlas of European values

Another teacher who did a CLIL course with us, Jan Gideonse from KWC in Culemborg, sent a reference to the Atlas of European Values, which looks promisingly useful for EIO, as well as geography. The clearly-designed site has been funded by the EC and the European Values Study “explores Europeans´ attitudes about religion, politics, work, society, family and Europe. The results are represented in maps that clearly show patterns and trends across Europe.” The teaching materials include materials developed by Fontys Hogeschool for student exchanges. There are 21 active learning strategies applied to the maps and materials.

P.S. Christmas sites

Another clilblog has lots of stuff for Christmas – mostly for first years I reckon.

And onestopenglish also has some free Christmas lesson plans… type in Christmas and tick “show free resources first”. Probably only useful for English teachers.