Teaching practice aimed at developing the competence to differentiate fact from opinion in students with learning difficulties

Abstract

This research aims to implement and evaluate the effects of an intervention program for students with learning difficulties on acquiring the ability to distinguish between fact and opinion. It is an experimental study with alternating treatments. Three fifth-grade elementary school students enrolled at a city public school in Piauí, Brazil, participated in the research. The experimental design involved three phases: baseline, intervention and follow-up. The intervention program was carried out through presentations of videos and excerpts from printed texts containing different genres of text, to enable visualization, reading, analysis, and distinction between fact and opinion. The students' engagement, the impact of technology on teaching, and the learning environment during the intervention were analyzed. After the intervention, data showed that the teaching had a positive impact, with acquired skills being maintained at the follow-up. The experimental approach revealed that participants had not only mastered the proposed skill, but also demonstrated greater communicative ability, expanded their expressive vocabulary, showed autonomy in carrying out the activities, and engaged more actively with their peers.