Project Follow the Thread: Literary Reading and Digital Culture in Portuguese Language Classes

Abstract

This article investigates how the articulation between literary reading and digital culture can contribute to the development of reading skills in Portuguese language classes in Basic Education. It draws on theoretical contributions from authors such as Lajolo (2006), Petit (2021), Freire (2011, 2014, 2021), Zilberman (2001, 2014), Lévy (2016, 2021), and Martino (2015), in addition to the guidelines of the BNCC (Brazil, 2017). The qualitative, descriptive-interpretative research takes as its corpus the project Segue o fio (Follow the Thread), developed with a 9th-grade class of a private school in São Paulo. The proposal consisted of reading John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2007) and producing narrative threads on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), assuming the perspectives of characters from the novel. The methodology involved historical contextualization, implementation of the activity in the computer lab, and analysis of the productions. The results indicate that students expanded their critical reading capacities/abilities while also developing digital literacy practices, re-signifying writing in online networks. The study concludes that integrating literary reading and social media enhances formative experiences that combine historical memory, textual creativity, and student protagonism.