Literacy: Older students are forgotten in actions – 09/07/2023 – Education

English teacher, Claudiane Tormes, 49, has set aside the content of her subject after realizing that almost half of the students cannot read or write even in Portuguese.

She teaches 6th year elementary school classes at a state school on the outskirts of Curitiba, in Paraná. At the beginning of the year, she identified that students did not understand what was written on the board or in the activities and were unable to write in their notebooks. Therefore, she started dedicating part of her classes to helping them with literacy.

By law, children should have guaranteed the right to learn to read and write by the end of the 2nd year of elementary school. Brazil, however, was never able to guarantee this right to everyone, and the presence of students with incomplete literacy in the final years of elementary school is a reality that schools have faced for years.

The pandemic has further amplified this problem. The students who are now in the 6th year were in the 3rd year in 2020, when the health crisis led to the closure of schools. In other words, they were left without face-to-face classes and little (or no) contact with teachers in the grade in which the consolidation of the literacy process is expected.

“There were always two or three students per class with difficulty, who needed more attention and adapted activities. But now, in a room with 30 students, half are not literate. It changes the whole dynamic, there is no way to follow the planned content “, says Claudiane, who has worked in the public network for 26 years.

For specialists in the field, these older students, who were not guaranteed the right to become literate at the expected stage, are “invisible” as they are not currently the target of any specific public policy.

The National Literacy Child Commitment, launched by the Lula (PT) government in June, does not foresee actions for the final years (from the 6th to the 9th year). In state networks, school reinforcement policies for these grades also do not outline specific strategies for literacy.

“The Brazilian government is making a great effort to solve the problem of literacy, but it is not seeing the situation of a group of children who are in school. A group that was greatly harmed in the pandemic, did not receive attention from the government at the time and now it continues without being looked at”, says Elaine Constant, coordinator of the LIA (Integrated Laboratory for Literacy Studies) at UFRJ.

A Sheet spoke with teachers from three states and different subjects who reported the difficulty of dealing with the number of students without the complete literacy process.

Claudiane, for example, only has two classes a week with the 6th year classes and assesses that, even returning to activities for this process, they are insufficient to cover the learning gap.

“The children haven’t even developed the motor coordination necessary to write, they have difficulty writing following the lines of the notebook. They can’t read words written in cursive. The gap is too big,” he says.

Graduated in literature, Claudiane is familiar with the literacy process even though she has not specialized or formally worked at this stage. “For teachers of other subjects it’s even more complicated. They even try to help students read and write, but they don’t have the training to do so.”

Álvaro Dias, 44, history teacher at a state school in Mogi das Cruzes (Greater SP), says that he has been looking for literacy activities for his 6th grade students. “There’s no point in me arriving in the classroom and giving the content that the secretariat sends, if the children aren’t following. In one of the classes, more than 70% can barely read what’s on the board and copy it into their notebook.”

He says that he has adapted the activities of his discipline so that they are carried out orally. “I have few classes with them, so I think of strategies to optimize time and for them to learn something. If I wait for the whole class to respond in writing to an exercise, the class won’t go ahead.”

Biology teacher at a state school in the Santa Cruz region, in Rio, Priscila Santos, 36, says she started asking her colleagues in the Portuguese area for help to provide literacy activities to her students.

“It’s sad because students are already aware that they should know how to read and write and they are embarrassed. It’s easy to identify those who don’t know, they refuse to write and say their handwriting is ugly or that they are slow. In fact, they are ashamed and insecure for not knowing.”

Anna Helena Altenfelder, president of Cenpec (Center for Studies and Research in Education), says that specific actions should be considered for older children’s literacy, as the conditions and complexities are different.

“Teaching children to read and write at this age is different from when they are young. There may be greater resistance because of the insecurity and shame that the situation brings. But it also has some advantages because the child already has an idea, contact with the literate world. It doesn’t start from scratch.”

For her, the absence of policies is unfair to students and teachers. “The student is penalized for not having learned during a pandemic. And the teacher deals with the problem alone, without having been trained to do so. We cannot have a commitment to literacy that leaves out those who did not have the opportunity at the appropriate stage. “

Kátia Schweickardt, Secretary of Basic Education at MEC, said that the Lula government needed to choose priorities in the educational area despite the initial diagnosis having highlighted a series of serious problems at all stages.

“We needed to define what was most urgent, but we didn’t forget the final years of elementary school. Students at this stage will be better served with the expansion of full-time education, which is one of the government’s priorities.”

The secretary also said that the ministry is developing a training policy for basic education teachers, which should include strategies for restoring literacy skills for students in their final years.

In a statement, the Paraná Department of Education said it had launched the Mais Aprendizado Program, which groups students by level of difficulty. The ministry said teachers have received training to deal with students who still have literacy difficulties, but did not say how many were trained.

The ministry also said that “it has made available platforms that can be used by teachers to enhance students’ learning time. These are applications or games from companies that the ministry has charged to be used in the classroom, such as Khan Academy and Quizizz.

The Rio Education Department only reported that it has the Foco project, which provides school support for students in grades 6 to 9 and high school, but did not say whether there are specific actions for literacy.

The São Paulo Department of Education did not respond.