Remote teaching in times of pandemic: reading and text production for children and youth

Abstract

This paper presents two experience reports on the teaching of literature and text production within the transitional context generated by the Coronavirus pandemic. Students all over the world had their classroom lessons suspended, and there all those involved in teaching-learning process had to adapt their activities to a new model. The theme of “death” became part of everyday life and, thus, to approach such a difficult subject that was so present raised the need for discussion and reflection within the virtual classrooms. Promoting reading and text production in the context of pandemics brought the need to stimulate dialogues with the readers, establishing discussions about the meaning of death, about grief and longing. Focusing on these concerns, the teaching work proposed to first-semester college students, in a public institution in the state of Sao Paulo, the composition of short stories based on images created by the Senegalese photographer Alun be, in his African-inspired photo project, which unites the virtual world and the mythical past of African culture, in a process of integration between the mythical past and the present, punctuated by technology. In turn, students from the Elementary School II of the private educational system of the city of São Paulo produced verbal and non-verbal texts after reflections and debates promoted by the reading of books by Odilon Moraes, Viriato Correa and Beatriz Martín Vidal, establishing relations that dialogue with existential questions in evidence in the current context. Pierre Lévy, Nelly Novaes Coelho, Didi-Huberman and Roland Barthes offered the paths that illuminate the practices carried out during this period of synchronous classes, focused on reader training and text production.