Super Pi vs. Coronavirus by MARIO FADDA https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95 Adapting a CLIL math project to distance learning en-us 2020-05-29 09:36:14 UTC 2026-04-28 18:10:42 UTC hello@padlet.com Introduction mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600832672                                                                                                     La vita passa e noi la lasciamo passare come l'acqua del fiume,
                                                                                                     e solo quando manca ci accorgiamo che manca.
                                                                                                                                                           -Grazia Deledda, Canne al vento

I started the implementation of my CLIL project a few days before the school closure due to the Covid-19. Seeing the evolution of the situation in Italy, I had foreseen that I would not be able to implement the original project. But I hoped that I could at least present the main ideas and adapt the next classes to distance learning, not quite imagining what that would have meant... Eventually, the sudden closure of the schools left me with enough time to present the project only in two out of the three groups I'm assigned. In the next couple of weeks, we were asked to lead some self-contained teaching activities. Finally, the direction of my school asked me to reorganize the activities of the last term encouraging me to include CLIL activities. Super Pi, the fictional student and main character of the comic on which I base my CLIL classes, had won the first battle against the Coronavirus!]]> 2020-05-29 09:39:51 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600832672 School context (in "normal" times) mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600835577 The Doctor Puigvert School is located in Barcelona, close to the Nus de la Trinitat, in a place where three different neighborhoods meet, namely Sant Andreu de Palomar, Baró de Viver, and Trinitat Vella. It receives students also from Bon Pastor and Nou Barris. As a consequence, the socioeconomic background of our students covers a large spectrum, that includes a substantial amount of families living below the poverty line. The academic support the families can offer to their children and their expectations vary enormously, not necessarily following the same lines. Not surprisingly, low expectations lead often to low levels of motivation and engagement, thus creating a simmering environment where challenging situations can suddenly materialize.

Since last year, our math CLIL project involves all the students that are starting secondary school (150 students this year). Some of them have been studying English privately since their early childhood and are quite proficient. Others have struggled through primary school and have a very limited knowledge of the language, a problem that becomes particularly acute during speaking and writing activities. To address this situation, last year we reorganized the three hours of mathematics and the three our of English into three blocks, each lasting two hours:
  • Math-only activities: one math teacher that uses the local languages;
  • Math & English activities: the same math teacher, that uses (mostly) English and is accompanied by an English teacher; a comic, drawn and written by myself, motivates the math activities and connects them with language exercises; 
  • English only activities: two hours with an English teacher.
We have observed this year that no student questioned the implementation of CLIL activities. This is in striking contrast with the situation of the past years, when in each group there was always some student asking to cancel CLIL activities  (even when they were part of an elective course they had chosen). We believe that this is due more to a general societal change than to the pedagogical offer, that anyway we try to improve constantly and renovate each year.
]]> 2020-05-29 09:41:46 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600835577 Situation during the confinement mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600837039 Despite the effort of a dedicated teaching staff, several students are not being very active during the confinement weeks.

On the one hand, in some cases there are objective difficulties due to overcrowded houses, lack of adequate technical means and/or family situations that are not conducive to regular study habits (poor housing, insecurity due to family violence or increasing levels of poverty, etc.).

On the other hand, other students, despite living in conditions apparently more suitable for engaging in learning activities, seem to be overcome by the situation, expressing some time the need for a more personalized support. However, having to follow over 70 students, there is a limited amount of time that can be devoted individually to them.]]> 2020-05-29 09:42:49 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600837039 Starting again after the break - Main changes to the original project mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600838102 After the break, the need to adapt to distance learning and the new directions issued by the educational authorities led to a major reorganization of our responsibilities at school. I was still in charge of organizing the teaching material for the  first-year math classes. But we abandoned the division of math and English activities into three blocks. Instead, English as such was part of a new language block including local languages. Mathematics was to be taught as a block of its own and the whole term had to be based on a project. The obvious choice was... adapting the GEP2 project, beefing it up with more math activities and, alas, watering down a bit the interaction in English. I had to depart from the original project in several ways:
  • The material had to be posted in a moodle course and students were to be offered support via videoconferences.
  • We removed the activities where students were supposed to interact among them in English.
  • In the moodle, instructions are in Catalan rather than in English to facilitate understanding.
  • I created a few math tutorials in Catalan, to review some concepts and processes.
  • I added calculation exercises.
  • I added some videos (the challenges), presenting in English math problems loosely inspired by the current situation.
After the break, I started offering weekly three one-hour video conferences in Catalan: on Mondays (review of activities due the past week), Wednesdays (presentation of the new activities) and Fridays (solving doubts about the new activities). The students' turnout has been at the same time discouraging and encouraging. On the negative side, 50% of the students have never joined  the video calls. On the positive side, there is a group of dedicated students that participate regularly. Interestingly, this group includes both high achievers as well as students that struggle with math and/or English. Stimulated by their response, two weeks later I added two more connections, where I use (almost) exclusively English. And so we were back on a roll! Well, only with a reduced group of students... But then again, I'm a glass-half-full kind of person!
]]> 2020-05-29 09:43:30 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600838102 The comic mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600838424 The original project Let's measure and reduce already contained an episode of the comic, where the readers discover that Berta, Super Pi's best friend, is called this way in honour of Berta Cáceres, the Honduran activist murdered four years ago. Her story is mentioned as an embodiment of the slogan Think globally, act locally. It serves the purpose of introducing the leading activity of the project, namely the study and quantification of a personal habit that has an impact on personal health and/or the environment. I thinks that this activity fits very well the current situation, when it has become clearer than ever that public health and personal responsibility are deeply intertwined. By the end of the project, students are invited to come up with a proposal for improving the habit they have studied.
In the original project, the comic was accompanied by linguistic activities (see the video), that in the distance-learning version have been substituted by  two exercises directed at checking whether the students had read the comic.]]> 2020-05-29 09:43:44 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600838424 First weeks (before Eastern break) mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600843623 When we started the confinement and we still did not have a plan for the rest of the school year,  I started a blog where I made available new material. The key point was the need to flatten the Covid-19 curve, a concept that is by now very familiar but that at that time was still novel for most people. Drawing on a document elaborated by the Computational Biology and Complex Systems Group of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, I wrote the teaching material Learning from South Korea to show the relevance of mathematics in understanding the current situation and the connection between epidemiology and mathematics. One of the authors of the document published by the university has expressed appreciation for the teaching material and has offered collaboration in the future. The unit included a new episode of the comic and a problem recorded on a video.]]> 2020-05-29 09:46:35 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600843623 The Challenges mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600846330 The challenges constitute a short collection of problems spread through the moodle units. The idea is that they should help students visualizing data and thus connect math with "real life". They usually involve big numbers , proportionality and/or basic geometric notions. When I have recorded the problems in English, I have added subtitles.]]> 2020-05-29 09:48:08 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600846330 Online classes in English mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600861039 During the confinement, my video calls have gone through several phases. During the first week, I talked with the students about several topics but, crucially, not about mathematics... They had questions about the current situation and the near future. No need to say that all this talk, that had a high emotional charge, was conducted in the local languages. Later on, when the students started understanding that we would be grounded at home for quite some time, we were finally able to move to mathematics. But, alas, the video calls started being unidirectional. When they had doubts, they would write to me an e-mail rather than asking a question on-line. So I looked for ways of doing mathematics together. The video calls are still rather unidirectional, but now, using Desmos and Sheets, they have to be active and cannot just sit and listen. ]]> 2020-05-29 09:58:10 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600861039 Final remarks mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600862444 We will finish this project in two weeks. Despite this, it is already possible to draw some interesting conclusions:
  • I always find it difficult to have the students using actively English. Teaching remotely, it is proving to be even more difficult. On one hand, establishing communication with the students, keep them active and check how they felt had priority over strictly academic endeavours. On the other hand, I think that students expected me to assume my role of a teacher and, thus, to require them to... behave like dedicated students. I wonder whether I found the right balance.
  • The current situation forced me to take several steps that I had kept postponing since at least two years:
    • I finally created a Moodle, where I can store explanations and give easily exercises of different levels of complexity;
    • I have started exploring the possibility of producing videos, both for providing explanations and to present problems;
  • For the first time in my career as a Math teacher, I proposed a project in an ordinary class and I allowed students to choose among different ways to realize it. I think this is a major step forward. I have been particularly impressed by the reasons provided by some students to motivate their choice:
    • A few students chose the water-consumption project, because this gives an answer to a real economical concern their family have.
    • Several students chose the recycling project, because their family are already environmentally conscious, but they think they can further improve their habits.
    • Many students chose the project aimed at reducing the amount of time spent using electronic devices, because they think this is a way to improve their health. 
Finally, the experience accumulated during these weeks makes me feel more comfortable with the idea of organizing an eTwinning project that could include some online classes. The possibility of having a linguistically mixed audience, where students need to use English as a lingua franca,  is what will turn CLIL classes into a learning environment that students will perceive as necessary and natural.
]]> 2020-05-29 09:59:12 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/600862444 Main links to teaching material developed by the author mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/601000515
Original GEP2 Project:
       See the project Let's measure and reduce.
Adapted project:
       Enter my moodle as a visitor.
GEP1 portfolio:
       Meet Super Pi here.
YouTube material:
       See the collection of videos started during the
       confinement (there are currently two channels:
       CLIL and ESO1)]]> 2020-05-29 11:53:53 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/601000515 Super Pi - Special Edition mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602311307 We explain why the Coronavirus is worried about its future.]]> 2020-05-30 10:12:43 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602311307 Learning from Korea mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602319210 This document (made available also in Catalan) reviews basic notions needed to interpret a graphic and the more advanced notion of logarithmic scale, a topic of third/fourth of ESO, that is necessary to represent situations where one value, like the number of people infected bu Covid-19,  increases very fast. It presents information, at this early stage, of the possible evolution of the virus. Despite the critique received by a curriculum expert, I assumed that kids could not wait two-three years to have the mathematical tools to understand the news...]]> 2020-05-30 10:27:13 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602319210 Homework by a high achiever mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602337914 2020-05-30 11:03:53 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602337914 Special Needs Students mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602351145 Student's solutions to the unit, adapted by a colleague.]]> 2020-05-30 11:30:48 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602351145 Example of a questionnaire answered by a student mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602514588 The student's answers are written in blue, the teacher's corrections in red.]]> 2020-05-30 15:29:24 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602514588 Why Berta? mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602515835 This is the 8th episode of the comic Super Pi.]]> 2020-05-30 15:30:56 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602515835 Ordering the captions mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602534559 The comic in the moodle appears without the captions. In this exercise, students are asked to assign a caption to each panel. ]]> 2020-05-30 15:55:33 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602534559 Practicing many/much/long mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602603403 Gap filling exercise: each group has to raise a paper with the missing word.]]> 2020-05-30 17:29:15 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602603403 Desmos mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602622164 Desmos was born as an on-line calculator. But there is now a dedicated group of people that are creating math classes that can be used freely. In the Balloon Float activity I assisted students while they were doing a number of exercises about proportionality. Most of my explanations were provided in English.

]]> 2020-05-30 17:58:55 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602622164 Google Sheets mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602623931 For activities that are directed to teach and practice calculation algorithms, Sheets is very handy. I prepare a spreadsheet with some calculations. I perform one or two of them and then I assist the students while they are practicing on the same spreadsheet. This way we can comment their mistakes and difficulties.]]> 2020-05-30 18:01:50 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602623931 mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602658159 To complete this activity, students are asked to solve the problem recorded in the video and propose related questions. They can use English or Catalan.]]> 2020-05-30 18:58:49 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602658159 mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602769874 An answer in English]]> 2020-05-30 22:16:22 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602769874 mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602776282 The best questions have been included in a follow-up problem.]]> 2020-05-30 22:30:33 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602776282 mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602783226 A brilliant student's answer to the 2nd part of the problem]]> 2020-05-30 22:44:33 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602783226 mfadda https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602788959 Questions proposed by a student in Catalan]]> 2020-05-30 22:58:15 UTC https://padlet.com/mfadda/etwdtqwp8nd0zb95/wish/602788959