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recreational activities were privileged that would allow communication with the
pupils, and that would give importance to the visual field.
22.3 Research
22.3.1 The Study Area
The research was conducted at the Municipal School Professor Armando Grisi,
located in Jardim Paulista, in the outskirts of Rio Claro, S˜o Paulo, Brazil, housing a
community of low income. This explains why the neighborhood has several
problems in the urban environment. A study on the perception of space and
character of the “environmental educator”, which embraced and integrated the
pupils in this school, proved to be of great importance. Even in the school where
the research was conducted in 2006, we started work only with the inclusion of deaf
pupils in the district where it is located. Because of an imposition policy, the school
received these pupils. However, the support was poor. The school principal in the
period in which the proposal was implemented (on a visit made in 2009) reported
that, despite the difficulties, staff and pupils committed themselves to actually
include the deaf community in the context of regular school. From this context,
they took their own project and structured (bilingual), defined needs, strategies and
possibilities. According to the director, this work would be impossible if there was
no engagement of all staff and pupils. Currently, City Hall/Department of Educa-
tion provides funds to guarantee an expert educator in BSL (Brazilian sign lan-
guage) accompanying nine deaf pupils who attend school regularly in elementary
school. Regarding the distribution of deaf pupils in classes, the Director during the
visit in 2009 told us that at start, all who attended the same grade would be placed in
the same class. However, she said, motivated by the interests of hearing pupils to
learn sign language, the classes were rearranged so that there was a greater
“integration” and learning from each other, even though this might be discussed.
22.3.2 Pupils Involved
Initially, when this survey was idealized, we thought of the implementation of
activities in classrooms with deaf and hearing pupils. However, during the visits
and conversations with the teacher and pedagogical professional hired by the
school, it was decided to carry out activities only with the deaf pupils. We believed
that this way the main design goals would be achieved. It is worth noting that all
activities were planned and designed so that they could be developed in classrooms
with deaf and hearing pupils. At the same time, the different levels of proficiency in
Portuguese and in the written form of Brazilian sign language, the different levels of
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