Student protagonism in learning through projects
A reference in democratic management and family participation, EMEF Amorim Lima, in São Paulo, Brazil, prioritizes learning through projects. At school, students develop their research through scripts and under the tutoring of an educator.
Instead of fixed teachers, each student has a tutor educator, who will assist him in his learning process, based on guidelines from a curricular normative prepared by the direction, group of teachers and the School Council. At EMEF Amorim Lima, each tutor is responsible for 20 students per term. Once a week, this educator holds a five-hour meeting with his tutees (students). If the student has any questions, he can look for the tutor on other days of the week.
The content of the school year is organized by research scripts. Each script has around 18 themes (or tasks) for the student to develop. These scripts are proposed based on the content of textbooks received by the student. However, in the learning process, he consults several books and different areas of knowledge, integrating them into the same subject.
Instead of walls and classrooms built in the traditional model, Amorim Lima has educational spaces called halls – the school has two of them. In one is cycle I (from 1st to 4th year) and in the other is cycle II (from 5th to 9th year). Students sit in groups of four to carry out the research collectively, but answer the script individually.
In each hall, there are five to six educators. Lectures only take place in mathematics, English and text workshop subjects. Teachers circulate around the hall, guiding or answering questions raised by students during the surveys. As it is the student who decides the order of the scripts he will follow, even when sitting in a group, students are not always carrying out research on the same script.
When finishing a script, students describe in a portfolio what they have learned and give it to the tutor, who will assess whether the student can receive the next handout, with a new script. There are no tests and assessments are carried out through the portfolios produced by the students.
In addition to the itineraries and guided study spaces, students have a wide range of activities available – workshops that are carried out in partnership with other organizations in the community and the city as a whole.