Water in everyday life and in science classrooms: analysis of discursive interactions and teaching strategies in primary education

Abstract

This article examines how a primary teacher establishes links between students' initial contributions on the theme ‘water’ and the elements that will make up the teaching approach of this subject in the science classroom. For this purpose, we examine discursive interactions in the first lessons of a teaching sequence, looking for links between events that are being elicited and developed by the teacher with intense participation of the students. We shall also examine the teaching strategies conducted by the teacher, emphasizing the presence of visual resources in text production activities, understanding them as literacy practices in the context of science lessons. To examine the effectiveness of these strategies and mediational resources, we shall analyze some exemplars of the students' productions (texts and drawings). We will use as criteria of analysis: speech marks of the opening activity and of the preliminary discussions in the texts produced by the pupils; evidence of changes in the pupils’ initial repertoires about the theme; evidence of connections between the “water in our lives” and “water as a science subject”. The context of the research is a third year grade classroom in a public elementary school in Contagem / MG - Brazil.