LITERACY PROJECT: A MEANINGFUL EXPERIENCE WITH READING AND WRITING IN
AND OUT OF SCHOOL
Literacy projects. Discursive genres. Re-signification of teaching practice.
This research focuses on the Literacy Project (PL) teaching tool, which, based on students' interest in social issues, aims to develop situated reading and writing practices. Given the principle that the school is the primary agency for literacy (Kleiman, 1995), it is essential to direct pedagogical action toward meaningful learning in which reading and writing are linked to concrete contexts of interpersonal relationships. Given the environmental issues, the students were interested in participating in a PL aimed at minimizing the lack/insufficiency of adequate basic sanitation in their municipality. Therefore, this research's main objective is to investigate the impacts of PLs on the development of reading and writing and on the formation of critical individuals with an agentic stance in society. As methodological procedures, we adopted the precepts of action research guided by Thiollent (1986) and the qualitative data investigation approach postulated by Bogdan and Biklen (1994). Regarding Literacy Studies, more specifically, with regard to PL, we are guided by the contributions of Kleiman (1995, 2005, 2007, 2016), Oliveira; Tinoco; Santos (2014), Oliveira (2016), Santos (2012), and Santos (2020, 2024). We base our Multiple Literacies on the foundations of Rojo (2009, 2012) and Oliveira (2010). Regarding discursive genres, we are anchored in the postulates of Bakhtin (2003). The research was developed in an 8th grade class of Elementary School - final years, at the Santa Terezinha State School located on the outskirts of the municipality of São João do Sabugi/RN. The corpus of analysis consisted of material generated during the research through discussion groups, interviews, observations, and field notes, texts produced by the students, and image recordings. Thus, the intervention demonstrated the relevance of the PL, as it enabled the redefinition of teaching practice and the connection of school knowledge to the students' socially constructed knowledge, given that the participants experienced concrete situations involving language use. The results, still preliminary, reveal progress in reading and writing skills, as well as greater autonomy and engagement in using language for social change among the students participating in the research.