Literature in School: some theoretical and practical perspectives that contribute to the formation of the literary reader

Abstract

This article analyzes the formation of the literary reader, articulating assumptions of literature teaching as a cultural, aesthetic, and social practice, based on studies of theories of discursive genres related to empirical data generated in a reading proposal developed with a 4th-grade class. The research problem is: How can intentional pedagogical mediation, through inference strategies and text-to-text connection, contribute to the formation of the literary reader in the early years of elementary school, overcoming practices centered on decoding and structuralist-based reading? The persistence of traditional models centered on decoding, structural analysis, and utilitarian reading, which hinder students' engagement and interpretive autonomy, is problematized. In contrast, it argues that the formation of the literary reader requires intentional pedagogical mediation capable of creating reading needs in children and promoting their active insertion into social language practices. The analyzed proposal focused on the work A Little Red Riding Hood, mobilizing responsive attitudes and activating the perceptive masses of the students, favoring the construction of interpretative hypotheses from the first contact with the book. The results indicate that projects and strategies that favor the active participation of school students contribute to the expansion of their cultural repertoires and the development of their critical thinking. It is concluded that guaranteeing the right to literature implies promoting an environment in school where reading is experienced as discovery, interpretation of the world, and an exercise of intellectual autonomy.