All teachers wish that their students understand what they are teaching and they do not want that their students have to memorize facts in a superficial manner. Perkins (1992) shows that when information is memorized in a superficial way it will be easily forgotten. On the other hand, when something is understood, it is not easy to forget it, and can be transferred to other situations.
The problem of schools, is that for the greater majority, teachers focus their effort to teach routine classes, based on the explanation of the teacher using text books, send homework, correct them and a final examination of what they explained in class. As we see in the school experience of Paula who says “I remember some teachers that I really dreaded. The classes started to be very humdrum, the teacher use the book, and we only work with the book, as I said before the best was the specials days at school and the school trips…As you grow up, the classes are a routine, focus on memorizing well the book and drop it on the test to get a note…”
Thus, we think that this is not the best way to help our students to learn, since we have suffered this type of education, if we remember few things about baccalaureate and we got it recently, less things we remember about what we learned in primary, apart from reading and writing.
Therefore, we think that another type of intervention at the school would be more fruitful, as in Paula's school experience said that “Also, I remember one teacher that taught us by playing, this teacher was Antonio Bueno, he did games that we had to study before to answer the questions well.” This teacher, still using the traditional method, tried that their classes were entertaining, teaching social sciences as a game for the children, because we must not forget that we are going to work with children and we have to attract their attention, so they will enjoy learning our subject.
A good way to create this interest from the part of students, is to make them part of the subject, not for being primary school students and have less experience in life we have to undervalue their knowledge or opinions, on the contrary, we must encourage it, and according to Spaulding (1992), we should be given the opportunity to students to think about what they are doing, talking about it with other students and even teachers, to clarify and understand how can it be applied in many situations.
That is why we think, that propose projects of the interest of the students to work with them in class can be a good way, this is not the final solution but at least allow children to design their work processes. Also, projects are activities in addition to relate them more independently with the culture, the natural world and social-technological world, show what children really think about different topics, keeping in mind their ideas and inventiveness, lead them to mobilize their theories and confront them with each other and with experience contributing to the further possible development (Freinet, 1975).
Even so, ideas for projects may not arise from an imposition, so students require an environment and help to can initiate and consolidate the projects, school should promote new challenges to children, proposing them to begin to ask more questions and to have, by this way, enough material where propose new challenges.
So, the role of teachers is crucial to create this atmosphere at school. The Italian teacher Mario Lodi (mentioned by Tonucci (1990), always carried with him a small diary where he wrote down the topics of conversation that he heard from his students during the break time or in classes, a few days after, he analyzed his notes; and he used this notes to get to know their students and, eventually, to suggest topics for projects of their interest.
With all of the exposed, we can see that the biggest ally or enemy of the teacher is the time, requiring him to choose the problem, to design the plan of work, reformulate it if it is necessary, to develop it as he planned and time for the communication of the results. In addition, hurry the process guiding in excess children is counterproductive. Therefore projects require time, and a long time you can consume for results that are, for a naked eye, small. For this reason, we believe that not all schools are able to implement or reinforce their classes with projects, because some schools do not want to or can not expend the time and work required. And what they don't see, all the learning that the students gain during the process.
Perkins, D. (1992). Smart schools: better thinking and learning for every child. Riverside, NJ, The Free Press.
Spaulding, C.L. 1992. Motivation in the classroom. New York, McGraw-Hill.
Freinet, Célestin (1999), Técnicas Freinet de la Escuela moderna. 34ª Edición. Madrid, Siglo XXI (Mexico)
Tonucci (1990). Enseñar o aprender. Barcelona, Grao.
