Leitura e escrita em crianças de baixa renda: estudo de follow-up após a pandemia da Covid-19

Abstract

Introduction: The beginning of the new coronavirus pandemic prompted reflections on the effects of school closures and the influence on student learning. Such effects may be more pronounced in low-income children. Objective: To verify whether there were changes in the written language performance of low-income students who were subjected to an intervention process prior to the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic and to evaluate the reading and writing of this group in the 5th year of elementary school. Methodology: This dissertation has two studies, in which study 1 is longitudinal, qualitative and quantitative and study 2 is cross-sectional, both approved by the research ethics committee number 4,704,128. In study 01 and 02, 21 and 27 children with education between the 2nd and 5th year of elementary school participated, respectively. Study 01 was based on assessment data before and after the pandemic, from children who participated in sessions to stimulate phonological awareness and vocabulary skills before the pandemic. Letter recognition skills, phonological awareness, phonological working memory, access to the mental lexicon and reading decoding were assessed. In study 02, performance after the pandemic of reading skills, speed, comprehension and reading and writing fluency were analyzed. Results: In study 1 we observed improvements in phonological awareness, syllabic subtest and total score; phonological working memory, pseudowords and digits subtest in direct order; access to the mental lexicon, number, letter and object subtests; and reader decoding. Despite the improvement in performance, these values still did not reach the expected level for the age and education of the participants. In article 02, fluency, comprehension, reading and writing are below what is expected for the children's age and education. Conclusion: The losses in written language skills highlight the relevance in understanding the educational reality of low-income children in Brazil, as well as in formulating future actions aimed at minimizing possible delays in students' literacy.