LITERACY PRACTICES IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION: POSSIBILITIES FOR GETTING CLOSER TO WRITTEN LANGUAGE

Abstract

Children's entry into the first year of elementary school is an important milestone in their lives, both in terms of social appreciation and the qualitative leap in their psychological development as a result of learning to write and read. In Early Childhood Education, the most common activities, such as make-believe games, are not always considered relevant to the literacy process. Vygotsky argues that these games form the genesis of operations with systems of representation, when the child attributes the function of a sign to objects. The author traces the prehistory of written language to show that a more complex symbolic system like writing has precursors that contribute to its development and meaning. The aim of this study is to analyse the incorporation of contextualized literacy practices into make-believe games in a class of children in the final year of Early Childhood Education at a Municipal Early Childhood Education Centre in Campinas. The methodology is qualitative and this is an interventional study, which seeks to monitor the day-to-day pedagogical practices, creating a field of problematization around the possibilities of inserting materials that are part of written culture, in the moments of make-believe play. The hypothesis is that the children will be able to expand their role-playing situations by incorporating reading and writing practices into their games. These situations will be videotaped and recorded in a field diary for additional information. They will be organized into episodes for study and analysis. The results will help us to conjecture about the role of mediation and the planning of cultural situations for the use of writing and reading in the inclusion of children in literacy practices during make-believe play.