Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
produced by these observations and recordings of activities in the classroom. This
type of narrative investigation is a variable of the qualitative research, being
justified by the fact that we—human beings—are story-tellers organisms that,
individually and socially live reportable lives (Connelly and Clandinin 1995).
After the activities performed by the children, narratives about the facts and
students' dialogues are prepared, allowing the emergence of several “selves”
through the interventions and students' productions, the reflections on the activities
and aspects of the process (Conelly and Clandinin 1995). In this perspective, both
the teacher and the students are story-tellers and also characters of their own and
other stories. Therefore, the narrative structures the experience that will be studied
and will be the way by which it will be analyzed and how it will be presented.
As an example, we will present a teaching activity that was performed with
children from kindergarten. It is important to emphasize that the dialogues exposed
here use the initial letters of the students' names and TEACHER refers to the
researcher who performed the practical activity.
20.3.1 Cartography in the Children's Universe
To perform this activity, we chose a children's literature book because this kind of
book mobilizes the imaginary of the children and is widely used by the teachers. We
used the topic “A Pirilamp ´ ia e os dois meninos de Tatipurum” (The Pirilamp ´ ia
and the two boys in Tatipurum), by Jos ´ Rufino dos Santos (Santos 2000 ), a story of
two boys who live in Tatipurum (a planet). Each boy lives in one side of the planet
so they always argue about who is upside down.
A cicada called Pirilamp ´ ia, helps them to find out that in the space there is no
upside or downside, no matter the side of the planet you are on. From this story we
notice that the spatial relations of neighborhood (upside/downside) could be devel-
oped in the classes.
We planned a didactic sequence composed by three activities developed in a
class (Pr´ I A) with kids aged from 3 to 4 years old, at “Escola Municipal Sueli
Maria Proni Cerri”, in the city of Rio Claro, Sao Paulo. In this study we will present
the first stage of this didactic sequence, which has the purpose to get to know and
represent the story in a tridimensional material.
The activity was recorded—image and sound—making it possible to transcribe
the speech of the participants and also the gestures of the students, elements that
sometimes escape from the teacher-researcher's immediate perception. For this
transcription, we used the minuting technique, which consists in taking notes of
the observation in intervals, and when necessary integrally transcribe parts of the
participants' dialogues. These transcriptions helped in the elaboration of the narra-
tive that reports the development of the activity.
To perform the activity, we divided the students in two groups so that we could
register the students' dialogues and actions more accurately. ANA, GAB, JES, JHE,
Search WWH ::




Custom Search