- 7/11 & 11/11 -

Monday:

We started this lesson with a video filmed in a real class. It was about an activity focused on a monster project. 

In the first video a student appeared counting the parts of the body of her monster and in the second video appeared another student counting the parts of the body of another monster, but this time next to the drawing, that he was pointing, there were a lot of other monster drawings. 

We were thinking and explaining that an speaking activity makes more sense when the students are using their own models (their monster drawings as in the example).Because we foster their creativity and we motivate them to talk about their creations. 

Furthermore, we said that we have to take care of the activities order to give cohesion and meaning to the full lesson and project.

We also seen different book activities and talked about how useful or useless they were. We discovered that:

"The children have to write for a purpose not only for writing"

At the end of the class we learnt a poem about seeds and plants growing. We thought about different useful and meaningful activities that we can use to teach the poem. I discovered that there are plenty of ways to teach a topic or to make an activity. 

Friday:

"1,2,3,4,5

once I caught a fish alive

6,7,8,9,10

then I let it go again.

Why did you let it go?

Because he bits my finger so.

Which finger did he bite?

The little finger on the right."

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We started the class with this song, that can be useful when the children are restless, it's a funny way to keep their attention, but also a way to learn the numbers in English. 

Then, we started talking about maths in English. Our teacher showed us new materials that in my case I didn't know, this material is called 10 frame. It's very useful to teach mathematics, but more specific to learn the numbers form 1 to 10, to know the possibilities that we have with the number 10, and also to teach about addition and subtraction. 

We reminded that it's very important to make questions to the students to ensure that they are understanding and to make an engaging lesson. 

We also saw mental arithmetic and different exercises we can do. It surprised me how useful is to teach maths in English, because the students are the same time are using different English skills, but practicing mathematics too. 

We talked about different types of exercises: Counting backwards and forwards, telling the smallest or highest number in a set, saying the number that comes after or before, use patterns (what relation have all the numbers?), say a number between 2 numbers, etc. 

We also said that we have to be careful with the level, because is not the same teaching maths in our first language than in the second. Our teacher said that when we teach maths in English we have to teach the content of the past course or level. 

Finally we were doing some practical learning by doing sums of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. We thought the power of questions to correct, to observe and to encourage them to improve. 

We also saw the mathematic vocabulary that we need as teachers in this field: plus/ x times or X by X/ take away or minus, etc.