I created this innovation because my high school students did not know how to write an essay. In 2003, when the results of the external assessment (SARESP - São Paulo State School Performance Assessment System) arrived at my state school, Professora Ruth Cabral Troncarelli, under the jurisdiction of the São Paulo State Department of Education, I was upset. The students' right to master their own language was not being guaranteed. So I said to my principal, “I don't know what will happen next year, but I'm going to completely change my Portuguese classes!” And that's what I did.
The first step of the project is: I ask the students to form groups and then instruct the teams to suggest topics and themes that meet the interests and expectations of the class.
Once this has been done, I ask the groups what their proposals were and write each one on the board. Once the suggestions are known, the students start voting for the most relevant subject.
At the end of the selection, the students identify the top vote-getters. The next step in the project is to hand out the sheets with the thematic proposal to the students. These sheets clearly state: the chosen theme, the dates for submitting the text, various guidelines for writing the texts, and the date of the final assessment — the rewrite.
The third fundamental step of the project: reading the text in front of the class. The invitation to the students to read their work in front of the group is essential to captivate and sensitize the class to the importance of exposing what they had thought.
1) The project has been systematized in my book "O Desafio do Projeto ‘Penso, Logo Escrevo’" launched on November 29, 2014, with a preface by Prof. Dr. Boudewijn A.M. van Velzen, educational change’s specialist, and made available to interested teachers.
2) The book was the subject of the "Planning and Assessment" course (2017) at the Faculty of Letters of the Federal University of Campina Grande in Paraíba (more than 2000 km from São Paulo), contributing to the training of future Portuguese teachers.
3) Teacher Geane Kênia has been applying the project's methodology in a Minas Gerais state school since 2019, when I was invited to visit her classroom after the first months of implementation.
4) Teacher Ingrid Soma has been adapting the project 'I Think, Therefore I Write' for Elementary School students. She works at Sumie Iwata School on the outskirts of São Paulo city. The writing project's mascot is a pencil, a creative insight from teacher Ingrid to introduce the activity of writing in a playful way.
5) The “I think, therefore I write’ approach has been disseminated by São Paulo State Secretariat of Education to other schools.
You should wish to implement a more dialogical and interactive pedagogical work. in which curriculum is not seen as something closed and unchangeable but alive, being created and developed through the actions of the school community. The participation of all makes a difference in this process. Teachers and students, all together, can create something new— this is so exciting!
