Children who write, but don’t read

difficulties on basic literacy

Abstract

This case study is about difficulties children face when learning basic literacy, presenting a study regarding the dichotomy in this learning process. The theoretical support used intends to explore two distinct views of the learning process of basic literacy: the Psychogenesis of reading and writing proposed by Ferreiro and Teberosky and the studies of Cognitive Psychology, having in mind a complementary function of these two theories. This study was carried out with seven children (five and six years old) from a private school in Porto Alegre. They could write words correctly, but could neither read nor understand them in different contexts. Based on pedagogical evidences, it was discovered that the activities proposed by the school concerned learning the alphabet, syllables, as well as phonemic awareness, with emphasis to writing tasks. However, none of these tasks focused on building up the contextualized meaning of the words, regarding only linking letter and sound. Therefore, this study presents activities with pedagogical base, developed in classroom environment, in which the understanding of contextualized meaning of words was encouraged by reading tasks.