Children and their performance in oral narrative production in preschool

Abstract

The article results from research in the field of Social Studies of Childhood, in interface with contributions from investigations into narrative performances. The objective of the research was to investigate how preschool children, with the help of mediation processes that promote collaborative action, produce narrative performances. Methodologically, an ethnographic and propositional research project was carried out with a group of seven 5-year-old children who attended preschool. Twenty narrative workshops were proposed in order to highlight children’s multiple languages during their narrative production. The workshops were organized in three stages, named as: 1) experimentation; 2) exploration; 3) oral narrative production. The proposals developed involved storytelling, conversation circles, image reading and oral narrative production. The research results demonstrated the children’s creative process in the production of narratives, as well as their body and vocal expression through performances. With the analyses, it was possible to infer the relevance of offering contexts that promote narratives, as well as the fundamental role of teachers’ mediation in the development of children’s oral language skills. In this way, the recommendation that children have time, spaces and possibilities to express, with their narratives, the experiences lived in preschool is supported.