Linguistic awareness is crucial in learning literacy. This project has a two-fold aim: to develop the students' ability to think about language in order to write with accuracy and to lead teachers to promote students' discussions about their writing difficulties. The study is part of a two-year action-research project developed in primary schools from the Lisbon area, with experimental and control groups. The starting point of the project was the analysis of the problems students of third and fourth grades showed in their writing. The scope of the project includes dictation tasks within an interactionist approach, favouring grammatical discussions leading to the observation and manipulation of linguistic data.

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Waste recovery systems are implemented around the world. These systems play a highly important role in the integrated waste management process. The constant technological evolution of this type of equipment aims to answer to global and European standards that increasingly require a reduction in the deposition of waste in landfills and a progressive growth of the recycling levels per capita. To allow the insertion of waste equipment in places where there are several limitations, such as the available space and the urban environment, buried equipment for the storage of waste appeared. This equipment has a large storage capacity, and because they are completely buried underground, only permanent deposition top bins are visible. This work was developed with the aim of improving buried underground waste disposal equipment, including the devices to comply with safety regulations and automated opening/closing mechanisms. The complete equipment can be divided into three parts: the liner, the buried structure, and the interface with the depositor of waste (through the deposition top bin). Because many of the available solutions are empirically based designs, there is a high margin to improve competitiveness, which reaches greater proportions in a scenario of economies of scale. The main equipment concept is presented, and structural analysis is accomplished by the finite element method, allowing for improved equipment to be proposed that replaces the current solution. Prototype fabrication/testing and cost analysis are also performed. A proposal to revise the current modular structure is finally presented, which allows for a cost and weight reduction of 6 % and 15 %, respectively.