“It is from the connection to the past that we gain the strength to form our identity”
(Ecléa Bosi)
Do you know what Year 5 and Blue have in common? Both classes are in a transition period: the Blue students are bidding farewell to Early Childhood Education to begin a new cycle in Elementary School, while the Year 5 students are completing Elementary I to move on to Elementary II.
Here at be.Living, we highly value these transitional moments that produce many expectations for the children, preparing them in the best way possible for these changes. And one type of work we use to achieve this goal with both Year 5 and Blue takes place through the literary genre Memoir.
“We see an opportunity through the Memoir genre for Year 5 to reclaim the stories experienced by the class and other members of the community throughout their educational journey. It is a way to complete the cycle at be.Living, which in our case ends in the fifth grade, by strengthening the children’s identity in both social and individual aspects. We base our work on the ideas of several thinkers, and Ecléa Bosi, who has extensively explored the concept of memory, states that it is ‘from the connection to the past that we gain the strength to form our identity’. The memoir text helps establish this relationship between the past and the present, allowing the future to be considered through reflections on situations experienced by the children themselves” – explains Gabriela Fernandes, Early Childhood Education coordinator at be.Living.
Gabi reports that the Y5 children also recover the memories of people in the community, bringing them closer to a nearly complete understanding of life experience in the school setting. “In English, they produce their memoirs and in Portuguese, they write memoirs of other people in the school community. We believe that by acknowledging and appreciating the experiences of others, we can foster a sense of responsibility for the collective.”
In Early Childhood Education, memory is developed through hands-on experiences. “The children participate in activities with the teachers from the other years, experiencing proposals related to the curricula of the groups they have already gone through: sensory experiences with the Yellow Orange teachers, story retelling moments specific to Green, games that were part of Red… All of this is part of the process of reclaiming what they have experienced so that they recognize their growth and feel empowered to face the new challenges that are coming, gaining the confidence to make this transition” – explains Camila Maia, coordinator of Early Childhood Education. All of this is part of the process of reclaiming what they have experienced so that they realize they are growing and feel empowered to face new challenges that are coming, gaining the confidence to make this transition” – explains Camila Maia, Early Childhood Education coordinator.
Camila says that working on the Memoir topic with Blue arose from the desire to add even more meaning to the rites of passage already performed with the class. “We engage in a lot of dialogue, take pictures, and record various moments so that they can reflect on who they are in Blue, how their body has outgrown the space, and how the playground no longer provides as many challenges… And from these perceptions, we look ahead to Elementary School.”
Throughout the year, the Blue class visits the Elementary School building, performing various activities. “At one point in the first semester, the PE teacher suggests that they are starting to get too big for their court and could try a bigger court. So, they take a PE class in the Elementary School. We create opportunities for them to become more familiar with this space, gaining confidence for the transition that will take place the following year.”
At the end of last year, in a special meeting between the Blue and Year 5 classes, the children were able to exchange experiences and feelings about this very important moment in their lives. Year 5 asked for the meeting to take place in the Early Childhood Education building, so that they could reminisce about the place where they experienced so many meaningful moments of their early childhood. The Blue children seized the opportunity to ask many questions about Elementary School and also gain further insight into the Memoir genre, taking advantage of the fact that the older class had studied the genre in depth. Year 5 happily shared everything they had learned about the subject. It was an incredibly enriching and inviting exchange for everyone!
