Classrom and Semiotics: a reading experience with children

Abstract

Teaching of a mother tongue has always raised many issues. For teachers, research inside the classroom is always both attractive and challenging. There lies our interest in the use of the Semiotic Theory proposed by Greimas in the study of classroom dynamics. Such interest resulted in this work, which aims at discussing some reading activities proposed to 5th grade (Elementary School) students, carried out in a public school. These reading activities are based on the text “Meninos do Chafariz”, by Júlio Emílio Braz, which can be found in the didactic material developed by Leila Lauar Sarmento. As reading strategy, we used “lexical groupings”, methodology developed by Maurand. In preparation to the activities, we divided the text considering lexical fields, and then selected the most important lexical groups to be part of the reading activities. After analyzing the text with the Semiotic concepts and the lexical groups, we were able to take some Semiotic concepts to the classroom, such as the themes and the figures extracted from the text. By using these activities, it was possible to observe that the students need to be exposed to a methodology that can explain the different meanings in a text, especially for them to understand how these meanings are formed.