Childhood memories - memories of children. An activity on "school memory" produced during primary school attendance

Abstract

How do boys and girls who attend primary school remember their school experience? Not as adults, but during their school experience in that school? The didactic experience in question was born from a double need. On the one hand, to propose to children a didactic activity of reflection and elaboration of their individual and scholastic memory (that is collective) to be repeated several times during the five years of school. At the same time to observe the children grappling with their own school memories in progress, identifying the mental processes at work in this complex work of individual and collective construction of memory. The essay reflects both on what emerges from the "children's writings" and from the "children's memories" that have settled, and on the didactic meaning of this activity, which lies on the border between history, creative writing, construction of individual and collective identity.