Small schools: history, organization and their relationship with the community to which they belong. Proposal for the creation of a single schoolbook to teach English language in multigrade classes in a Primary school

Abstract

The thesis topic addresses the pedagogical choices in the multigrade class of small Italian schools and stems from a personal experience carried out as an English teacher in a Primary School of a small mountain village in the Dolomites. Here the multigrade classrooms welcome children of different ages and skills and their communities perceive them with naturalness and absolute normality. The growing number of multigrade classrooms spread in many territories forces us to reflect on a new way of considering the multigrade class as an opportunity for growth, for extended experiences, as a stimulus to autonomy and mutual aid, even cross-age, trying to abandon a past vision of the multigrade classroom as a limit. The INDIRE Institute and international experiments lead us to reflect on the lack of specific methodological indications for the multigrade class and propose to think not by strictly defined programs, but by curriculum. The need to propose a solution to the lack of school textbooks, designed exclusively for the multigrade classroom, arises from a personal experience. The thesis, therefore, proposes the project of a single, but versatile text valid for the five years of Primary School, for learning the English language, in order to facilitate the didactic organization and the achievement of educational and strictly disciplinary objectives. The text is structured around common themes, but the objectives of personalized education coexist within them.