Cartography in Studying the Environment: Bilingual Practice Aiming at the Inclusion of Deaf Pupils - Maps for the Future Children Education and Internet - page 271

and the living space of the pupils. For Callai ( 2005 ), a form of scanning the world is
realized through the reading of space, which reflects the daily activities of men in
their environment. Thus, reading the world goes far beyond reading cartographic
representations which reflect the local area, sometimes distorted because of the
cartographic projections adopted. To read the world is not just doing a reading of
the map or by the map, although it is very important. You do the reading of the
living world, built daily, expressing both our utopias and the limits that we are put
in, either in the scope of nature or within the context of society (cultural, political,
economic) (Callai 2005 ).
Therefore, in the development of activities with deaf pupils, the use of maps is
not the sole factor, but is an important visual resource for exploring the living space
and the teaching of geography. By corroborating this view, it is said that in the
school, the discipline of geography, in particular the contents of Cartography, offers
subsidies to expand the pupils' understanding of the place where they live and work
(Juliasz et al. 2007 ). Cartography is, therefore, an important resource for the
teaching of Geography, because it allows the representation of different perspectives
of space and scale that is appropriate for teaching. Thus, the mapping allows the
pupil to understand the manner in which he or she is inserted in space, which can be
at local, regional and global levels. Through maps, they will be able to distinguish
the different and distant locations, giving them the possibility of a more critical
view of reality that they belong to.
According to Almeida ( 2001 ), the importance of learning in a socio-cultural
context of modern society, as a necessary tool in people's lives, requires a certain
mastery of concepts and references to spatial displacement and ambiance, and more
than that, so that people have a conscious and critical view of their social space
(Almeida 2001 ). As Almeida and Passini ( 1989 ) point out, the living space refers to
the physical space experienced through movement and displacement. It is learned
by children through games or other forms by going through it, enclosing it, or
arranging it according to their interests. Combining the use of Cartography,
drawings, photos and games, we aimed to improve the understanding of space by
pupils. In the case of deaf children, it was essential to value their vision. The option
of showing and building drawings with them is in agreement with the studies based
on the perspective of Oliveira Jr, who says: “The drawing was really a scape
option. Fleeing from the word, whether oral or written, as the only transmitter of
knowledge and information. But it was also an option for that approach.
Approaching to a language more suitable for the transmission of knowledge
about space, where the elements would be presented spatially, without the need
for a chain of words and expressions. When looking at a drawing we already have a
global view of it and we can 'read' it in several ways, from various points. It is also
like this with the space and the city” (Oliveira Jr 2006 ). Regarding games, we
shared Albres' idea ( 2010 ) that tells us that childhood is a significant period for
language acquisition. At this stage, recreational activities are built in the form of
games. The same author points out the relationship among games, language and
cognition development in deaf children. For this reason, during the study,