The organization of the teaching of the written language: contributions from the historical and cultural theory

Abstract

Fundamental Education's evaluation results produced by the Brazilian Ministry of Education revealed that students' performance in Portuguese has not been up to standard. Pedagogical practices with more positive impacts in students' learning are highly required. Current essay comprises a section of a research which investigates the organization in the teaching of the written language that would trigger learning and students' development according to learning formation potential established by the historical and cultural theory. A formation didactic experiment was undertaken in which subject matters on the written language were undertaken during three months in a third grade classroom of a government primary school in the state of Paraná, Brazil. Data collection was done by observations, reports of activities and video-recordings. Some teaching episodes on punctuation in Portuguese are given in current text. Analysis of the experiment showed that students' learning is enhanced when activities that involve reflection and requires the active elaboration of knowledge are taken into account. Situations-problem on the subject matter triggered the required mental activities for the student's conscious learning. It has also been verified that teaching activities should be planned by the teacher so that the students would focus their attention on the object of learning. Student's verbal explicitness on their hypotheses may be a guiding tool for the teacher's activities. In fact the teacher will thus follow the type of mental activity that the students are undertaken with the subject matter.