“Palitárvore da Predicação” and “Varal da Predicação”: proposals for the development of syntactic awareness in elementary education

Abstract

The aim of this work is to contribute to discussions about the teaching of grammar in elementary education. More specifically, the aim is to present two pedagogical proposals: the “Palitárvore da Predicação”, for the study of the simple sentence, and the “Varal da Predicação”, for the study of the complex sentence. Such activities, constructed with manipulable materials, aim to develop students' syntactic awareness, based on the assumptions of Generative Theory, such as the proposal of Faculty of Language and language as a system, in order to deal with notions such as argument selection, phrase and structural hierarchy. In this way, we consider, on the one hand, the need to overcome a purely classificatory teaching of syntax and, on the other, the urgency of implementing a scientific approach to grammar in elementay education. It is expected, therefore, to collaborate with a grammar teaching perspective in which the student is given the opportunity to reflect on the functioning of the structure of their language, explaining their previous grammatical knowledge and favoring the process of scientific literacy.