This paper aims to discuss about one of the most traditional modality of record in the school process: the notebook. For this reason, the research demonstrates some important aspects that occur in the school daily work and also describes some kinds of dilemmas present in the school context in which these reports had been done. From an ethnographic perspective, the fieldwork had some procedures such as: participant observation during one year inside the classroom and the analyses of notebooks. Many rules for using the notebook were observed during this year: to copy many words from the blackboard; to organize the issues; to use the rubber; to make the correct sequence of the activities, and so on. The notebooks are important instruments of control from the teacher to the students and from the parents to the teacher and the student. They don’t express sufficiently the dilemmas and the context in which the records are produced. When the notebooks are separated from the context in which they are produced, they will make us draw negative impression about the students’ performance
Notebooks; Ethnography; Elementary school