Compreensão de textos literários por alunos da educação infantil Literary text understanding by children education students

Considering the act of reading as an interactive place in which the reader constructs meanings, the present study had the objective of investigating the comprehension of literary texts by students of early childhood education, based on the discursive interactions developed between them in reading situations. Twenty students from the last year of an early childhood education class from a public school, as well as their respective teacher, took part. For this, eight videographies of the moments of circle reading were carried out. Then, an analysis of the communicative exchanges between the interlocutors was developed (dialogical analysis of the discourse based on the theoretical categories of positioning and responsiveness). It was observed that the teacher used strategies that favored the engagement of the children in the search for the understanding of the texts, generating amplification / change of meanings.


Introduction
The learning of reading by most of the Brazilian population occurs most often in school contexts (Silva & Martins, 2010).However, reading generally appears in these institutions much more tied to the idea of a system that has to be deciphered than as a necessary and socially relevant learning (Jacobik, 2011).
Differently, in this study, which is part of a master's dissertation, it is understood the act of reading beyond the decoding of the alphabetic writing system, that is, as an interactive space in which the reader builds his/her senses about the texts read.That is, comprehension is understood as a construction performed in the interaction of the reader with the text (Bakhtin 1979(Bakhtin /1997)), not being a simple act of extracting content from texts or identifying the present meanings (Marcuschi, 2008).
Thus, the text is not understood as a finished product, but rather seen as a process, in constant elaboration and re-elaboration by the readers.Through a co-authoring process, the different readers attribute meanings to the texts read based on their knowledge of the world, in which several possibilities of comprehension are allowed, although some are incorrect or impossible (Marcuschi, 1996), so that understanding implies going beyond the information contained in the text and involves inferring, creating, representing and proposing new meanings, which is a creative, active and constructive process.
Thus, the present study starts from a socio-interactionist theoretical perspective of human development, based on the studies of Mikhail Bakhtin and Lev Vigotski, who assume language as organizer of thought and planner of action (Freitas, 2005).Vigotski (1934Vigotski ( /2009) ) questioned the conception of the relations between thought and word as autonomous, independent and isolated elements, which presents a method of analysis based on the decomposition of thought and language.For him, thought does not express itself in the word, but is realized in it and thus restructures and changes itself.
For Bakhtin/Volochinov (1929/1981), language has as one of its primary functions the communication that occurs through speaker-listener interaction; two socially organized individuals, inserted in a concrete social environment.It is necessarily dialogical, since in the uttered statements echoes and memories of other utterances are present, and thus each utterance is constituted from another and is a replica of it (Bakhtin, 1979(Bakhtin, /1997)).According to Barbosa (2014), in articulation with Bakhtin's proposal, the utterance is a unique event and involves refraction, responsiveness, responsibility and positioning.
The refraction is constitutive of the utterance, because, at the same time that it reflects reality, the speaker performs this action according to his/her subjective view, that is, refracted.In this sense, the utterance is an active response and constitutes an expression of the consciousness formed by the internalization of a heterogeneity of voices circulating in society.However, at the same time, the subject participa-tes in the dialogue of voices in a particular way, since it has a singular history of constitution of its consciousness (Fiorin, 2008).
Regarding responsiveness, it is present in the process of comprehension of utterances, because the speaker participates in a dialogue with the text, that is, comprehension is loaded with response, and in the act of response, the active responsive attitude is expressed (Fiorin, 2008).The speaker assumes a responsive attitude in the comprehension process, once he/she agrees, disagrees, completes, criticizes, refuses, revalues, positions him/herself.Moreover, in dialoguing with texts, the reader assumes a position, and in assuming it, he/she is responsible for his/her production (Barbosa, 2014).
In this sense, the process of comprehension involves a cognitive and collective elaboration, in which we know something and identify something as a certain thing from internalized cognitive schemes that originate in the social.Thus, the text presents a meaning proposal, but is open to different understandings that are not random, but limited by experiences, social control and culture (Marcuschi, 2008).
However, as Brandão and Rosa (2010) often point out, the reading of texts by children or for children appears in school only as decoding and dissociated from meaning.Therefore, the authors affirm the importance of comprehension questions at these moments so that they can actively reflect on what is read, and the conversation about texts is one of the ways to teach them to understand them.
It is in this direction that Brandão and Rosa (2010) affirm that the literature circles, also known as reading circles, can be a good opportunity to contribute to the formation of listeners/active readers in the task of building meaning.For this, it is important that the practice of reading is constant in school activities, and that the teacher organizes these moments promoting dialogues and listening to children, creating a space of meeting among readers and building meanings (Brandão & Rosa, 2010;Corsino, 2010;Silva & Martins, 2010) in order to favor the production of shared meanings and collective construction by students (Santos, 2013).
According to Souza and Martins (2015), for the text to be understood, the teacher must plan activities so that the child activates previous knowledge, raise hypotheses, create mental images, make inferences, relate information and questions, actively participating in the process of building meanings.In addition, Marcuschi (1996) proposes some exercises seeking a broader understanding of the text, namely: identifying the central propositions of the text and possible intentions of the author, performing inferential activity, working with hypotheses from the title, producing text summaries, reproducing the text content in another genre, reproducing the text in diagrams, reproducing the text orally and performing review activities about the comprehension of a text.Although the activities described refer to textbooks, it is noteworthy that they can also be performed in conversations with students about the texts read on the literature circles.
Moreover, it is necessary that the teacher emphasizes at these moments the specific characteristics of the textual genre that is being worked in order to favor understanding (Silva & Arena, 2012).Regarding the literary genre, which allows multiple interpretations and readings, and shows the creative side of the written text (Corsino, 2010); it is important that the book inserted in this genre is understood as an artistic work, as an element to be appreciated, in order to broaden the literary and poetic repertoire of readers, and not with a pedagogical and moralizing function, a means to teach content from other disciplines, which is what is generally observed (Costa Ramos & Panozzo, 2008;Neitzel & Neitzel, 2009;Vygotsky, 1926Vygotsky, /2003)).About this, Vygotsky (1926Vygotsky ( /2003) ) (INEP, 2015b), it is important to study reading and comprehension of texts, especially in early childhood education, a period in which the construction of an active posture in the moments of reading, aiming at the construction of meanings of the text, can be worked by the teacher.
Studying this question allows us to know ways to develop an effective learning mediation, providing reflection on what would be important to consider in the planning of reading classes, so that students become aware of the processes involved in the comprehension of a text and become readers engaged in the task of constructing meaning.Thus, this study aimed to investigate the comprehension of reading literary texts by students of early childhood education, in situations of literature circles, from the discursive interaction between them and the teacher of the class, observing the constructions of meaning about the texts read.

Method
The study is anchored in a qualitative methodological approach, with a case study design, which involves the study of a contemporary phenomenon in its real context, being used to contribute to the knowledge of various phenomena (Yin, 2015).

Participants
Twenty students participated in this study, 11 girls and 9 boys, aged 5 years, from the last grade of Early Childhood Education of a Reference Center in Early Childhood Education Institution (CREI), in the city of João Pessoa, State of Paraíba, and the respective teacher of the class.Students have been studying at the institution since the maternal school and have participated in weekly reading circles for two years, being present since the implementation of the existing reading project at the institution.The teacher is 29 years old, graduated in Pedagogy since 2009 and has a degree in primary teaching.
The choice for Early Childhood students was because this is the first stage of basic education, in which there is an initial contact with literary books and where ways of reading begin to be learned by children.It is also justified to choose a class in the last grade of this stage, as this is a transition phase to elementary school, which has literacy as a central focus over the first years (Brasil, 2013).The institution where the research was conducted was chosen because it has reference in reading circle activities.The names described for the children in the present study are fictitious in order to preserve their identity.

Research Context
Regarding the choice of the context in which the research was conducted, we opted for an Early Childhood institution with reference in reading circle activities, considering that the aim of the study was to verify the pedagogical mediation that favors understanding in this type of situation.Thus, the criterion of convenience was adopted for the selection of participants (Flick, 2009).
To this end, the researcher went to the city hall in order to identify an institution that met the criteria raised, obtaining information about the reading project carried out in a specific institution, and obtaining the necessary authorization for it.
The Early Childhood Education Institution is located in a middle-class neighborhood of João Pessoa, State of Paraíba, it operates in full-time (morning and afternoon) and covers three grades, from maternal to preschool II (five-year--old), containing about 20 students per class.The present study was developed with preschool II.In pedagogical terms, for two years there has been the reading project in question, called "Reading is traveling and discovering".The project consists of two parts.The first part involves storytelling activities by the teacher, in a reading circle situation, held weekly at the library of the Early Childhood Education Institution, and the retelling of the stories by the children.The second refers to the weekly loan of a book to children.
In storytelling activities, teachers sometimes use puppets and theatrical performance.They also encourage children's retelling of stories and their reproduction in drawings.The retelling of the stories, also performed in the library, occurs at another time, in the same week that the story was told, but on different days, and involves the reading of the book by some child in the class chosen by the teacher (reading the images, since that children do not yet have mastery of written language) and some children's reports of what they understood about it.
Although this first part of the project is usually performed in the library, as the fan of this place was broken, the reading and retelling of the stories during the observations took place in the roofed playground area.This place is 5.0m x 6.0m, containing four fans, a television and an EVA mat that covers the part where children are sitting on the floor.Although it is a playground area, it is quiet as it is near the classroom corridor.

Procedures for data construction
After approval of the research by the research ethics committee involving human subjects (opinion 1.413.622)and signatures of the Informed Consent Form by the parents and/ or guardians of the children and by the class teacher, video recordings were made as well as observations of classroom reading at the beginning of the 2016 school year, from March to May, twice a week, in the afternoon, after bedtime, after lunch.
The moments of storytelling by the teacher and the moments of retelling the same story by the children were recorded.These activities were already carried out weekly according to the pedagogical planning, the moments of storytelling happened on Tuesdays and the retelling on Thursdays.The video recordings lasted 15 minutes for storytelling and retelling, during which time these activities were performed.
Video recordings focused the practices of reading and shared comprehension and, specifically, the moments of communicative exchanges were observed in the process of constructing reading meanings.
A total of 12 video recordings were taken: four filmings used as a pilot study and with the purpose of establishing rapport with the class, of which two were storytelling and two retelling; later, four filmings of the moments of storytelling and four of retelling, with the total recording time of about 1 hour and 50 minutes.For this, two camcorders were used, located around the outside of the reading circle, facing each other, so that the facial expressions of all the interlocutors could be captured.

Data Analysis Proposal
For data analysis, a dialogic discourse analysis was performed, based on the concepts present in the statements that were highlighted by Barbosa (2014), in conjunction with Bakhtin's proposal and the studies of Bakhtinian theory developed by Faraco (2009).Thus, the analysis focused on the positioning and responsiveness of the speaker as a participant in the dialogue with the text, which positions him/ herself responsively to the other's discourse and assumes an active responsive attitude, which implies: a) anticipation of the other's response and b) in appropriating the other's discourse as his/her own.
We also observed the moments in which the speaker agrees, disagrees, completes, criticizes, refuses, positions and repositions him/herself in relation to the other's speech.From this, it was observed the expansion/change of the meanings produced in reading in the moments of dialogue (see Figure 1).
Figura 1. Layout of the dialogic discourse analysis proposed and used by Barbosa (2014), in conjunction with Bakhtin's theoretical discussions and the studies of this theory developed by Faraco (2009).
For this, the video recordings were transcribed and later analyzed, from a microanalysis of the moments of communicative exchanges between the children and the teacher in the process of constructing meanings of the texts.The analysis was performed in the micro dimension because we observed in its details, aspects such as discursive exchanges and gestures, in times of shared reading.From the eight transcribed video recordings, two were chosen to be analyzed in the present study (one of the moment of storytelling and one of the retelling), considering that they provided moments in which the expansion/change of the meanings was more evident, which corresponds to the "The Ugly Duckling" story.

Observations of reading situations
The observations described here refer to the activities covered in the first part of the reading project of the institution, that is, the storytelling activities and their retelling by the children.When they reach the roofed playground, where the videotapes were taken, the children sit in a circle on the mat, together with the teacher, who starts the storytelling and then asks some questions.
The moment of retelling of the story occurred at the same place and time, but on different days, following the same circle structure.In retelling, the teacher randomly chooses one of the children to retell the story to the group, all the children in the class have this chance and the teacher selects them so that they can participate in equal proportion.After that, she also asks questions to the class.

Reading Situation 1: Storytelling "The Ugly Duckling"
The children and the teacher are sitting in a circle.The teacher is holding a box containing some figures stuck to popsicle sticks, which are used to tell the story.Throughout the storytelling, she takes a picture of the box to show the children and places it on top of the box so that it remains visible at all times.This moment lasted 14 minutes and two seconds.
Then the teacher begins the story with a slow, soft tone of voice.She answers the questions that are asked by the children and they actively participate in the moment of storytelling, either by repeating words spoken by the teacher (Teacher: "look at mummy duck with her little eggs" / Larissa: "mummy duck" / Fabiana: "little eggs"), answering the questions she asked (Teacher: "and who came out of the little egg?" / Lucas: "the ugly duckling"), asking questions (Victor: "Ms., and this one?"[points to one of the eggs in the image, which had not hatched out]), or using onomatopoeias according to what the teacher is talking about ("ploc, ploc, ploc" [noise of eggs hatching out] and "buá, buá" [noise of the ugly duckling crying]).
This shows that the teacher organized the reading situation so that there was room for the meeting between the different readers, that is, moments when there could be dialogue between those involved; important aspects to consider for a reading practice aimed at understanding (Brandão & Rosa, 2010;Corsino, 2010;Silva & Martins, 2010).
In addition, during the storytelling, some questions asked by the teacher stand out as expanding the production of meanings.When the teacher asks "and who came out of the egg?"And Lucas answers "the ugly duckling", the teacher broadens this meaning by stating in a question that he was really just different from the others ("a duckling different from others, right?"), making them comparing the images of the animals and reflect on their differences, beginning to construct the understanding that the duckling was actually a swan.
Then she broadened that meaning further by showing the image of the swan family and, before saying that it was a swan, asked if it was a duck, as a way for them to compare the animals again; and only after, she claims that the ugly duckling was a swan.This shows to have been a meaning that was broadened/modified when Fabiana and Larissa agree with her ("Fabiana: "is a swan"/ Larissa:"Ms., it was a swan"), going beyond what can be explicitly identified in the story.
About this, it is possible to understand the comprehension of the text as a cognitive and collective elaboration among the different interlocutors (Marcuschi, 2008;Santos, 2013), in which from the relationship between the information and the questions made, the children construct and expand meanings, issues that need to be considered by the educator so that the text used in the classroom can be understood (Souza & Martins, 2015).The active responsive attitude can also be observed at these times, as the speakers are continually agreeing, completing, criticizing or positioning themselves in relation to the other's discourse, be it another child, the teacher or the text.
Going forward, the teacher asks some questions and then asks one of the children, Fabiana, to report what she understood about the story, using the strategy named by Marcuschi (1996) to reproduce the text orally, for a broader understanding.
Regarding the questions asked by the teacher, the children usually answer in chorus, with the exception of some (Victor, Larissa, Fernanda, Fabiana and Lucas), who answer individually, although very rarely.Nevertheless, the teacher continues to use questions that promote the expansion/change of meaning (Teacher: "was it ugly?"/ Students: "no" / Victor: "was" / Larissa: "was" / Teacher: "what was it?"/Students:"beautiful"/ Teacher:" beautiful"/ "he was just different from the others"/ Students:"was"/ Larissa:"different"), focusing on the previously highlighted aspect that the ugly duckling was actually a swan, and emphasizing that he was not ugly but just different from the others.Victor and Larissa initially disagree, claiming that he was ugly, but then all the children agree on chorus, appropriating the teacher's spe-ech, stating that he is beautiful and Larissa agrees with the teacher stating that he is different.These extended meanings constitute the central ideas of the text and the possible intentions of the author, aspects highlighted by Marcuschi (1996) as important to be highlighted by the teacher to broaden understanding.
Then, the teacher raises the question about the duckling being sad that his friends were laughing at him (Teacher: "And when his little friends started laughing at him, he was like?"), and broadens the senses by bringing this issue into the context of children, highlighting respect for the other, stating that "we cannot laugh at each other because we are different from each other" and "no one is the same, each is different from the other", which the children agree answering in chorus "Yes!".
Fabiana even brings a situation within her family, as in the story of the ugly duckling, where it happened (Fabiana: "Ms., when I was at my aunt's house, my cousin laughed at me, then my aunt said she couldn't"/ Teacher:"we can't laugh at each other because we are different from each other, right?"), completing the teacher's speech, bringing an important aspect to the understanding that is the expansion of story for the lived world, given that the intervention provided the activation of prior knowledge and the association between information, aspects that are also important for the understanding process (Marcuschi, 1996(Marcuschi, , 2008;;Souza & Martins, 2015).
Despite these issues, the use of the literary text with a moralizing function, rather than as an artistic work, is observed at this time, which literature highlights as being contrary to the function of the literary text (Costa et al., 2008;Neitzel & Neitzel, 2009;Vygotsky, 1926Vygotsky, /2003)).Moreover, the teacher does not highlight the specific characteristics of this genre in the intervention performed.In this regard, it is necessary to highlight that working with text literarity contributes to a greater understanding and active participation of children in reading situations (Silva & Arena, 2012;Souza & Martins, 2015).

Reading Situation 2: Story retelling "The Ugly Duckling"
The children sit in a circle and the teacher hands Ana the ugly duckling story book, so she can tell her classmates.Then she asks the children to be silent and Ana to start telling the story, which she does from reading the images in the book and understanding the previous moment of the reading circle.At this point, only the book is used, instead of the popsicle sticks.This situation lasted 14 minutes and 45 seconds.
Ana tells the story according to the sequence of events previously used by the teacher, which shows the appropriation of her speech.Another point that shows the appropriateness of the teacher's speech is that Ana focused on the fact that the ugly duckling is actually a swan, whereas the other ducklings laughed at him for being different and finding his true family and finding out that he was a swan.
In addition, there was an expansion of the meanings, as Ana completed what had been told by the teacher, stating that the other egg (the ugly duckling) did not want to hatch out because it was that of a swan, while the others (the ducklings) had already hatched out (Ana: "Once upon a time there was a mummy duck, one egg was born first after another, the other did not want to hatch out because it was the swan").After Ana stated that the mommy duck was saddened by the fact that the egg had not hatched out, Lucas brought an expansion/change of meaning, complementing what was said by affirming that she was not his mother, also showing that he understood that he was actually a swan (Lucas: "it wasn't his mom").Then Ana directs what she is saying to the fact that he is not her son, appropriating Lucas's speech (Ana: "... then mommy duck said this is not my son, why is he not my son? that time the egg didn't hatch out, he's a swan").
Ana also makes an expansion/change of meaning by stating that the true mother of the ugly duckling, which she refers to as the swan, said that he was beautiful, possibly because he was equal to the family, in contrast to him being called ugly by the 'fake' family because he was different from them (Ana: "then he stayed with his family, he said my mother is this one, mother said 'I have another swan, look what a beautiful swan, he's just like me'").The aspect of being beautiful was also highlighted by the teacher in the previous circle situation, but not in relation to something that the real family noticed (Teacher: "Was he ugly?"/ Students: "No" / Teacher: "No, he was beautiful").
In these moments, it is possible to observe the positioning of the various readers, dialoguing with the central ideas of the text, as well as agreeing and complementing what has been said, issues that are present in the comprehension process (Barbosa, 2014;Bakhtin, 1979Bakhtin, /1997;;Fiorin, 2008).Continuing the activity, the teacher asks some questions and asks Larissa to talk about what she understood, continuing to use the strategy of broadening the comprehension of oral reproduction of the text (Marcuschi, 1996) and the conversation about the texts read (Brandão & Rosa, 2010;Corsino, 2010).As the different readers complement what was said by the other interlocutors, it is also noticed that although the text presents a meaning proposal, it is open to different understandings, as highlighted by Marcuschi (2008).
The teacher continues to emphasize in her speeches the central aspects of the story that had been discussed earlier: the fact that the duckling is not ugly, but a swan considered to be ugly because it is different, which was not right when the other ducklings were laughing at him and that, similarly, taking into the context of children, one cannot laugh at the other when he is different.
To this end, she begins by asking children the title of the story, using the strategy for broadening the understanding called working with hypotheses from the title (Marcuschi, 1996), and when they respond by saying "the ugly duckling," she asks if he is really ugly (Teacher: "what's the name of the story?"/ Students: "the ugly duckling" / Teacher: "but was he ugly?"/ Students: "no").
When the children respond negatively, she states that he is just different, and in the end clarifies that: "the ugly duckling, he was not ugly, he was different, he was not a duckling, he was a swan", and asks: "Can we laugh at people when they are different?",focusing once more on morality.Also, at this time the specific characteristics of the literary genre were not addressed.
Regarding children, in moments of responsive positioning, when the teacher says that the duckling was different, Victor states that he was a swan and Larissa stands saying that he was beautiful, aspects previously emphasized by Ana in the story retelling and appropriated by them (Teacher: "he was different" / Victor: "he was a swan" / Larissa: "he was beautiful").Also, when the teacher asks Larissa to talk about what she understands from the story, she states that the ugly duckling was not the son of "mommy duck" and that afterwards he found his family (Larissa: "… he was not her son, then later he met his family and end), which was also present in the retelling by Ana.
Thus, both in the situation of telling and retelling the story, it was possible to realize that the teacher used questions that generated expansion/change of meanings of the text by the children, who appropriated their speech, agreed and complemented what was said.This favored the children's engagement in the search for understanding and generated discussions that could broaden the comprehension of the story.In addition, she used the conversation about the text as a way of teaching to understand it, which Brandão and Rosa (2010) highlight as an important action to be performed on reading circles.
Because of this, the children actively participated in their learning process of reading comprehension and became involved in storytelling situations.This was also made possible through the organization of the reading circle, where a meeting space was created for the readers and for the shared construction of text meanings.
For this, some strategies developed by the teacher were: to show the pictures, to ask questions that went beyond the objectively present content in the story, to activate previous knowledge, to talk about the text, to request the participation of the children and the oral reproduction of the story, and to highlight the central ideas of the text.The children interacted constantly with each other and with the teacher, were attentive and participative.
Nevertheless, the text was used with a pedagogical and moralizing function.The story was chosen as an illustration for a moral rule, rather than pointing out the specifics and characteristics of the genre in question, in order to facilitate understanding (Neitzel & Neitzel, 2009;Santos, 2013;Silva & Arena, 2012).
The present study advances in relation to the literature of the area by bringing empirical data on how the teacher can act in order to provide the construction of meanings of texts and develop the reading habit since the early years, from the description of the systematization of a reading project and indications of the factors that contributed to the comprehension.
These are important points to be used in teaching mediation in reading circle situations, especially at this stage of teaching, as it is the first systematized contact of the child with the book and the beginning of his/her reading education, where a way of reading will be learned and will reflect his/her future readings.Thus, it is worth highlighting the relevance of these questions for the school and educational psychologist, since this professional can provide psychopedagogical interventions in order to mobilize educators to the practice of reading aimed at developing the comprehension of texts, so that this skill can be taught more and more effectively in school institutions.