Reading in Biology Classes—A Different Teaching Activity

Abstract

It is unthinkable to discuss learning without thinking of the merited prominence of reading and writing, since these are the essential actions for the production of different forms of systematized knowledge, among which is scientific knowledge. From this perspective, the present work proposes answering the following question: to what extent can the proposed pedagogy called reciprocal teaching aid in the development of the abilities of reading and interpretation of scientific texts? The discussion of a text found in a biology textbook was organized around four moments: questioning, summarizing, predicting and clarifying. The analysis of the data shows that the collective work helped in the comprehension of the text and, especially, in the understanding of the meaning of some scientific terms and permitted a deeper and more complex analysis of the text. This would hardly occur in a polarized reading situation in which the professor would present the expected interpretation.