It is not a question of opening a booklet and decorating the letters or following a program designed by a teacher in isolation. In Lumiar, literacy is born from the children’s engagement in the projects, workshops and modules they explore in each period.
“We always work on literacy from the context. We do not follow the logic of learning the letters first, then the syllabes. We already start with the social function of writing”, explains Alice Jimenez, tutor of Fundamental 1 of Lumiar Santo Antônio do Pinhal.
Writing learning, for example, considers the text in a context that makes sense to children. This means that the experiences used for inspiration are of daily life and of their interest.
Instead of a copy of content, students are encouraged to make different entries in the Logbook about what they have learned in the projects, to record their opinion on an event discussed at World Reading, to write a message to the family or to the assemble a word to be placed on the school mural.
“The logbook is an important tool for children to write and make other records every day. We use modules to systematize content that needs to be refined, such as a spelling or grammar rule,” explains Mariana Brancaglione, tutor of Fundamental 1 in Lumiar São Paulo.
It is in Fundamental 1, with children from 6 to 8 years, that the process of literacy gains evidence. Precisely in this age group, students begin to become more interested in reading and writing skills: they want to write a note to a friend, understand what is written in circles, such as school murals, and read works that instigate them – from a comic book to an adaptation of “Os Lusíadas”.
From these interests that naturally instigate the child for writing and reading, it is up to the tutors to make the necessary referrals so that each student develops his process and acquisition path of writing from the stage in which he is.
Literacy in multiage classes
At Lumiar, as cycles are multiage, children with more advanced hypotheses reinforce their knowledge as they help the younger ones to organize and structure their writing. Children with less advanced writing hypotheses tend to seek help from their more experienced colleagues and be inspired by their records.
A child with a predominantly syllabic hypothesis needs a different intervention from an alphabetic child who begins to worry about the conventional spelling of words.
The Tutor needs to have a good understanding of how the process of learning the written language takes place, knowing different approaches and strategies for literacy. Whenever necessary, he may revisit the guiding questions “on what, to whom and to whom to write” and thus make proposals to keep students engaged in their processes.
Interventions and corrections (punctuation, spelling, spacing between words, consistency, etc.) should always respect the development of each student while at the same time instigating them to advance in the knowledge of language standards and norms and to improve communicative skills.
The ultimate goal is for all students to appropriate the different uses of the language for the development of oral, written and reading skills that allow them to participate effectively in the social and citizenship exercise.