Cultura chinesa: contribuições para o letramento científico de alunos do ensino fundamental

Abstract

This dissertation reports on the development and evaluation of a didactic sequence that proposes to contribute to Literacy / literacy, including science, of students from the first years of elementary school. It should be noted that this issue is still a big Brazilian problem, as indicated by the internal evaluation (Provinha Brasil, for example) and also the external ones (PISA). Our proposal is based on three pillars: the history of China with emphasis on some aspects of its culture, Chinese writing that is based on ideograms (different from the Portuguese that is syllabic) and the realization of experiences related to flame test, the usual analytical method known to chemists. To attend the objectives of our didactic sequence, we elaborated the following didactic materials: a comic book (HQ) titled "“Clubinho da ciência, as invenções da China com Chin", a “kit” with the necessary materials to carry out the experiments and a hypertext to support teachers. In the HQ are presented some Chinese ideograms and their meanings, the inventions of gunpowder and the fireworks and a brief approach on what is Science. At the end of the story, Chin invites students to develop experiments together with teachers. Considering that the topics approach in our proposal are not developed in the initial teacher training, we have developed a hypertext for the purpose to plus them with the information we judge important. The materials were evaluated by two teachers of the initial years of elementary school (literacy teachers) belonging to the permanent staff of the City Hall of Campo Grande. The teachers were asked to answer if they would use our didactic sequence in their classes, and to make the suggestions that they thought pertinent. They both liked the didactic sequence (including the HQ and the kit), were emphatic in saying that they would apply it in their classes and offered some suggestions. However, the entire content of the hypertext was considered unnecessary and tiring, except for the part that explained step by step the experimental procedure. We conclude that the didactic sequence is good for use in classrooms and that teacher support material will have to be totally rewritten.