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Il presente studio espone i risultati del monitoraggio della sperimentazione Montessori svolta presso l’IC Riccardo Massa di Milano, capofila della rete di scopo “Scuola Secondaria di primo grado ad indirizzo Montessori”, insieme agli istituti comprensivi Ilaria Alpi, Arcadia di Milano e Balilla Paganelli di Cinisello Balsamo. Nello specifico è stato preso in esame il percorso di ricerca condotto presso l’IC Massa, evidenziando, come tratto peculiare del contesto, il ruolo chiave del percepirsi come comunità nel supportare lo sviluppo professionale dei docenti. L’approccio collaborativo tra le diverse figure (dirigente scolastico, referenti del corso Montessori e docenti) favorisce una progettazione didattica condivisa e promuove senso di appartenenza. I risultati dell’analisi dei focus group e delle interviste condotte con dirigenti, referenti e docenti mettono in luce l’importanza del gruppo di lavoro dei docenti e il legame tra sviluppo individuale e promozione della comunità, caratteristiche peculiari della sperimentazione, nel contesto considerato.

The increasing complexity the Italian educational environment, often made up of multilingual, multicultural and multilevel classes, requires effective ways of developing and strengthening the Italian language in students with an immigrant background. It should be a path of growth and sharing, useful and stimulating at the same time, capable of motivating students. Hence, the paper presents a didactic proposal based on a ludic methodology and the use of a new tool in the Italian educational context: the silent book.

This paper, based on an experiment conducted at a lower secondary level, investigates students' understanding of implicit information. What emerged from the observation is that the lack of understanding of implicit information leads to poor comprehension of the text and, consequently, reconstructing the meaning of a text on the basis of implicit information is a skill that can and should be taught, starting from the early stages of schooling.

This contribution proposes some teaching units that can be developed by the teacher of Italian in the lower secondary schools within the new curriculum of “Educazione civica”.

This paper aims to reconstruct the phases and the development of a didactic module created in the spring of 2020, when schools were closed due to the health emergency, and e-learning was introduced in a second year class of a lower secondary school. The focus is on reading, analysing and creative re-writing of two literary classics, Orlando furioso and Don Quixote de la Mancha.

This paper exemplifies the exploitation of a digital writing workshop in a lower secondary school. The research originates from a personal experience, gained during the school year 2018-2019, and aims to propose frequent and typologically diversified writing activities that enable students to work individually, as well as collectively and collaboratively, by using digital technologies, with the aim of enhancing not only their linguistic and didactic skills, but also their social and relational skills.

This contribution presents the practice of correcting student texts through the use of symbols, which has been used by and experimented with some lower secondary school teachers since the Seventies, to help students recognize their mistakes and improve their texts. Through the description of a field experimentation, it is shown how this correction strategy can be used in distance learning with the Classroom application, where it reveals to be equally useful.

Starting from the corpus of the project Italmatica. Comprendere la matematica a scuola, fra lingua comune e linguaggio specialistico, the present contribution proposes an analysis of the expression of the gram­matical category of number within specific statements of geometry: the definitions of the elements of the polygon. The analysis is based on the combination of research in linguistics and mathematics education. In particular, examples taken from the corpus are examined with the aim of analyzing the homogeneity or discrepancy in number and the linguistic strategies that convey it. The results show how a widespread linguistic discrepancy in the category of number corresponds to a significant lack of adherence to mathematical contents, which may negatively affect students' understanding.

This paper aims to find and analyse gender stereotypes and traces of linguistic sexism in textbooks. It starts with a review of studies and institutional efforts concerned with this topic, which has gained some remarkable popularity in recent years; it continues with the description of the corpus and the data under scrutiny, the description of data collection methodology and the illustration of the way data are analysed and commented.

This paper examines the role actually assigned to textual linguistics in the teaching of Italian by means of analyzing some recent school grammars. The study is based on the conviction that working with the notion of linking word or connectors can only be useful if the pupils are able to adopt a textual perspective. It proposes two classification models and connects the reflection on the connectors to stylistic, syntactic and interpunctual aspects and to the peculiar uses of connectors in sectorial languages.

This paper analyzes the linguistic variability of students’ answers to the questions administered within the Invalsi tests for grade 8 in the school year 2017/2018. From a quantitative point of view, the open-ended questions were classified on the basis of the linguistic variability of the relative answers; this classification made it possible to observe different behavioral patterns and deduce general indications. From a didactic point of view, the study allows to outline focused reflections on the verbalization of answers to reading comprehension questions. From a practical point of view, the study may guide further reflection on how to formulate open-ended questions in order to reduce the variability of answers.

This study examines the repercussions of computer coding activities, introduced several years ago in the Italian schools, for linguistic education. In particular, the article describes an experiment conducted in a lower secondary school, where a fairy tale, which had already been analysed by Propp as a linguistic algorithm, was coded in its single events by using a programming language with blocks in the programming environment Scratch. Subsequently, the instructions contained in the source code in blocks were “translated” into Italian and turned into a narrative by the students.

In an atmosphere of growing racism, xenophobia, intolerance and fear of diversity, schools, too, are faced with serious challenges. Taking—from a non-neutral perspective—the educational achievement of students of migrant origin as a parameter by which to evaluate the effectiveness of learning paths, we find that huge problems remain in our school system, which require the education system to be given the explicit function of a social equalizer. Through a Grounded Theory critique—part of a complex mixed-method study—the processes of (non-)success of students from migrant backgrounds are analysed, with the aim of developing a theoretical model for planning learning paths that work for all students. The research involved—through ethnographic observation, interviews and questionnaires—principals, teachers and students from five middle schools in the provinces of Trento and Turin. The multidimensional model which emerges demonstrates the importance of collective action which involves multiple links between schools, the political arena and the territory, following in the footsteps of both Lorenzo Milani and Paulo Freire.

Il saggio presenta le criticità della scuola secondaria di primo grado in Italia e propone possibili linee di innovazione.

Questo studio è parte di una ricerca biennale di CREMIT sull’uso dei dispositivi mobili in classe che, negli a.s. 2017/19, ha coinvolto 23 docenti e 113 studenti della classe prima di scuola secondaria di primo grado dell’Istituto «Sacra Famiglia» di Martinengo (BG). In questo contributo, ci focalizzeremo sull’educazione all'uso responsabile dei tablet che sono stati introdotti nelle classi dopo un anno di accompagnamento del corpo docente. Ragionando sulle implicazioni educative ci si è dotati di un regolamento d’uso che è stato co-costruito coinvolgendo studenti e docenti. Il processo di negoziazione che porta alla stesura del contratto diviene occasione di dialogo ed esplicitazione di bisogni che generalmente vengono ricondotti all’informale e che dovrebbe portare a una ricaduta positiva sulle abitudini d’uso quotidiane, anche fuori dalla scuola. Al fine di monitorare sia i processi che eventuali integrazioni al contratto e provvedimenti volti a premiare comportamenti virtuosi o disincentivare quelli poco positivi, i docenti sono stati dotati di un diario, in cui inserire annotazioni. I risultati fanno comprendere come si renda necessario che, oltre al processo di costruzione del contratto, anche la gestione degli incidenti critici divenga partecipata e condivisa, per fare della classe un vero e proprio spazio di esercizio della cittadinanza., We focus on a part of a research conducted by CREMIT about the use of mobile devices in the classroom. In the school years 2017/19 23 teachers and 113 students of lower secondary school of the «Sacra Famiglia» Institute (Martinengo, BG) have been involved. The main theme is the promotion of responsible behavior in using digital devices, which were introduced in school after a one-year training of the teaching staff. It was necessary to think about the educational implications, so students and teachers construct together a pedagogical contract. The negotiation process that leads to the drafting of the guidelines becomes an opportunity for dialogue and expression of needs that are traced back to the informal and which should lead to a positive impact on daily habits, even outside the school. In order to monitor any possible additions to the contract and measures aimed at rewarding virtuous behaviors or discouraging bad ones, teachers were asked to insert notes in a journal. The results make it clear that it is necessary that, in addition to the pedagogical contract design process, the management of critical incidents also needs to become shared, to make the class a real field for practicing citizenship.

The problems related to integration are becoming increasingly important in our complex and multi-ethnic society. There is an evident relationship between this phenomenon and the lack of awareness of inclusive language, which should be developed by education. The present paper aims to answer the question how to educate children to use an inclusive language by proposing two learning paths. The first, developed for lower-secondary school, starts from the reality of a classroom, and is based on the perception and the expression of the difference in the language of adolescents. The second, projected for first-grade students of upper-secondary school, is based on the reading of novels and related interviews, in order to raise students’ awareness of diversity, in cultural and linguistic term.

The present paper proposes some considerations deriving from an educational workshop dedicated to teachers of lower-secondary schools in the province of Forlì-Cesena. A brief description of the theoretical framework is followed by a description of how the workshop was structured, which topics were covered, the reasons behind the choice of topics and the reflections that have arisen, in order to draw some concluding remarks on this experience.

In 2018 and 2019 the Italian Ministry of Education (MIUR) introduced new writing examinations at the end of lower and upper secondary school that have a strong coherence, as they follow indications of the same work group. These tests derive from an idea of continuity between different school cycles. They demand a vertical programming from teachers which, with appropriate resuming, should guarantee pupils the fluency in Italian needed for the exercise of full and informed citizenship.