“What did you learn in this quarantine?”
This question – so profound and full of meaning, was collectively chosen by the Year 4 class as the topic for a powerful work that sought to put into practice everything that the class studied about the News genre throughout the year.
Like journalists, the Year 4 boys and girls conducted field research with the other children of the school to learn more about the biggest life lessons learned from the pandemic, social isolation and the process of distance education.
The results were surprising. In addition to achieving all pedagogical learning – referring to language, vocabulary, ways of approach and presenting news, the children achieved quality and meaningful work, promoting reflection in addition to providing information.
Y4 teacher Idalize Maeda says that the children read many news articles during the second quarter, in a stage of learning that aimed to identify the characteristics of this type of text, its structure and vocabulary. This allowed them to appropriate this knowledge to write their own articles at a later stage.
“We read a lot of news like this: ‘Research shows that coronavirus deaths occur more frequently on the outskirts.’ Or: ‘A study revealed a certain aspect of a particular subject.’ Many articles also feature interviews where the sources cite speeches from experts who explain, for example, how the virus acts in our body. We used these texts to survey the characteristics of the genre,” explains the teacher.
Ida says that when it came time for the class to write the news article, they collectively decided that they wanted to write good news regarding the quarantine. “In this reflection, they perceived that news programs are already marked by bad news and that, in a way, everyone already has access to this type of content. Then came the idea of writing a news story about what the school children learned during the quarantine. To that end, we studied how the research is conducted and then, starting from our reality of social distancing and the fact that they are not having personal contact with the other classes, they prepared a form, asking all the Elementary School children about what they learned, who taught them and how it happened. Finally, once this data was collected, the process of writing the news story began.”
The teacher recalls that they also worked on elaborating the graphics and images, understanding that illustration is a complementary language that helps the reader to better understand the news.
“We did a comprehensive project. They produced a chart on how much the children learned about technology, teaching subjects, selected some testimonials… In addition to working on chart production, data processing, punctuation, paragraphing, responsibility for working with real facts, transcription of someone’s exact speech, using quotation marks… i.e., everything that can be worked pedagogically in this genre, this project also developed a lot of reflection and empathy. In the exercise of listening to the other children’s speech, they saw that many learned to practice patience, for example, which is a very important lesson that the quarantine brought into our lives. Others learned about mechanisms to overcome boredom or even that to spend more time with family – which would not have happened if it were not for the quarantine. So they listened to and identified with these testimonials. I never imagined that the discussions emerging from this project would be so rich. It exceeded our expectations, going beyond pedagogical objectives and reaching the field of positive reflection.”
