INTRODUCTION

In the initial teacher training process, the curricular components linked to the internship group sometimes represent the first time that undergraduate students actually return to the basic education classroom as teachers in training. For this reason, it is usually an experience permeated by a range of feelings, which undoubtedly include anxiety and expectation, excitement and insecurity, and, at times, happiness and frustration. During this process, interns need to plan and build the paths that will be traced on the school floor, in addition to reflecting on the role they assume with the students.

From this perspective, the internship can be compared to a laboratory, a space that is conducive to verticalizing the understanding of content and experiencing new ways of approaching it in the classroom. In this context, this article emerges: the experience of two undergraduate students in Portuguese Language at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte as interns accompanying a seventh-grade class in a public school in the state education system of Rio Grande do Norte. During an internship focused on teaching Portuguese, the fantastic tale was presented as a possibility for an educational approach.

In addition to being included as content in the textbook adopted by the educational institution (^{ORMUNDO; SINISCALCHI, 2018}), the fantastic tale and its modalities appear in the set of literary texts considered by the National Common Curricular Base (^{BRASIL, 2018}). With such a tale, the proposal is to explore the possible constructions of meaning from the friction with the literary text, in dialogue with concepts and analytical movements operationalized by literary theory, such as the short story genre (^{GOTLIB, 1987}), the five elements of narrative - narrator, space, time, characters and plot (^{GANCHO, 2001}; ^{FRANCO JR., 2019}) - and the fantastic as an aesthetic category (^{CALVINO, 2004}; ^{PAES, 1985}; ^{ROAS, 2014}; ^{TODOROV, 2008}). This is the first section of this article: “A tug of war between worlds”, about the pertinence and relevance of the fantastic tale as a teaching-learning object in the classroom to promote literary literacy. For this investigation, the typology of short story is understood as a type of short narrative that contains, within its limits, the indissoluble doubt of the plot characteristic of the fantastic component, according to the perspective defended by ^{Todorov (2008}).

The short story selected for the proposed teaching sequence was “Casa de fazenda”, published in the book Maldito Sertão (2017b), by the author from Rio Grande do Norte, Márcio Benjamin. The choice to work with a work written by an author “from the land” considers that geographical proximity can act as a motivating factor for the development or awakening of an emotional closeness between writer and students and, above all, between them and literature. This discussion organizes the second section of this article: “The unusual diction of Márcio Benjamin”. Furthermore, the use of literature from Rio Grande do Norte in the public school classroom is in line with the particularities pointed out by the Curricular Document of Rio Grande do Norte (^{CUNHA et al., 2018}, p. 222) for the years of Elementary School. This document guides the development of reader training practices that include strategies capable of allowing the use of reading strategies for literary texts and establishing relationships between different works, considering the diversity of genres, origins and languages. Also, there is the existence of Law 11,231/2022 (^{RIO GRANDE DO NORTE, 2022}), which included Potiguar literature as content to be taught in the state's schools.

With this understanding and the perspective of the internship as theory-practice, the third section of this article is presented: “The fantastic lessons of learning by teaching, teaching to learn”. In addition to the description of the four moments planned during the internship period with a focus on the previous argument about fantastic stories and local literary production, discussions are brought up about the space-time of the internship in teacher training. According to Pimenta and Lima (2005/²⁰⁰⁶), there is a habit of viewing the relationship between theoretical disciplines and internship disciplines as a dichotomy, in which the latter would be the transposition of the content seen in the first group of disciplines - a movement, in itself, quite complex. In opposition to this paradigm, the authors defend the view of the internship as a binomial between theory and practice, dimensions that form an inseparable relationship that is effective through the various actions developed in the classroom.

The internship, as a metonymy of teaching practice, is based on a daily praxis, in which there is feedback between planning, execution and reflection on the actions developed, incorporating, in the activities, “study, analysis, problematization, reflection and the proposition of solutions to teaching and learning situations” (PIMENTA; LIMA, 2005/²⁰⁰⁶, p. 20). This concludes the last section of this article, “Final Considerations”, in which the potential of the didactic proposal and the contribution of its development for teachers in training are ratified.

A TUG OF WAR BETWEEN WORLDS

In contemporary times, technology and rationality take center stage in explanations of events in the world around us, relegating to the margins everything that escapes this mode of understanding. However, the current scenario reflects a process that has been developing more intensely since the 17th century, when Cartesian thought reached its peak. In the following century, the Enlightenment movement would ratify the previous stance, valuing characteristics such as fair measure and the use of reason in the conduct of human life and, by extension, in the creation of aesthetic and artistic pieces.

As a counterpoint to this dominant poetic, following the movements that put an end to the absolutist Ancien Régime, other forms of artistic expression began to circulate, such as the spread of Romanticism, initially throughout various regions of the European continent. Among the perspectives defended by artists linked to the new emerging aesthetic was the shift from the objective lens from which one sought to recreate the world towards the space of individuality and subjectivity, understood as filters through which creation would gain materiality. In this context, even the notion of artist underwent paradigm shifts, since knowledge of the technique developed by the previous and institutionalized canon alone no longer sustained the image of the poet, making it necessary to give free rein to the outbursts of creative genius.

For David ^{Roas (2014}, p. 190), “it is easy to understand the flourishing of fantastic literature during Romanticism, a period in which, in opposition to the objectivity of 18th-century neoclassical art, the emphasis shifts entirely to the subjective, the eccentric, the individual, the mysterious, the mystical, the libertarian”. According to the author, the emphasis given to the fantastic components in this period is expressed by the contesting nature of these elements. In this sense, the fantastic enables to inscribe in the text what the prevailing morality seeks, at all costs, to silence, since it is capable of “challenging the hegemony of the rational by causing the inexplicable, the supernatural - the irrational, in short - to emerge within the very everyday life that it monitors and codifies” (^{ROAS, 2014}, p. 190).

According to Italo ^{Calvino (2004}), the modernity of the fantastic lies precisely in its ability to bring out the unspeakable of a time, by finding gaps through which extraordinary events and elements gain ground in reality. For the Italian author, who was responsible for organizing an anthology of the fantastic tale of the 19th century, the short story was, historically, the genre par excellence for the operationalization of the fantastic as an aesthetic category.

The definition of parameters that would be possible to recognize a text as a short story is difficult to identify - it is not surprising what Mário de Andrade states that a short story corresponds to everything that is called that (^{ANDRADE, 1972}). However, among readers and researchers, some characteristics are reiterated, such as being a short text in which the actions are condensed into just one dramatic conflict. These notions recover the principle of economy of expressive means developed by Edgar Allan Poe in “The Philosophy of Composition”:

If a literary work is too long to be read in one sitting, one must willingly dispense with the all-important effect generated by the unit of printing — since if it has to be read in two distinct moments, worldly matters interfere with the text and its sense of totality is destroyed (^{POE, 2017}, p. 343).

Following the discussion established by Poe, the writer Julio Cortázar figurativizes the distinction between the short story and other narrative genres through images. Initially, the author makes explicit the opposition between narrative typologies through the contrast between the arts of photography and cinema:

[...] the novel and the short story can be compared analogously with cinema and photography, insofar as a film is a principle, “an open order”, romantic, while a well-made photograph presupposes a fair prior limitation, imposed in part by the reduced field that the camera covers and by the way in which the photographer uses this limitation aesthetically (^{CORTÁZAR, 2006}, p. 151, our emphasis).

As Poe states, the Argentine writer also focuses on the moment of reception of the text as a parameter for recognizing the short story. For ^{Cortázar (2006}), the relationship that is established during the reading moment can be compared to a fight in a ring. On one side, the reader; on the other, the text. According to the author, in a short story, the plot is expected to win by knock-out and, in a single blow, knock the reader out; in the case of the novel, the end of the fight, with the text's victory, would be determined by points, won chapter by chapter, thread by thread of the narrative plot (^{CORTÁZAR, 2006}).

The thematic content used in short stories is as diverse as their narrators. This plurality of categories and narrative tones correspond to the various types of short stories. Mystery, horror, detective, love and fantastic are just a few of these typologies. As already mentioned, this article analyzes the presence of the fantastic element in short stories. Initially, we present a brief historical overview of the scope of the fantastic in literature. To understand the fantastic dimension of texts, however, it is necessary to discuss and understand this element as an aesthetic category. To this end, the systematized thinking of Tzvetan ^{Todorov (2008}) in Introduction to Fantastic Literature is a fundamental theoretical contribution.

As the definitions of the short story are lost in the myriad of texts, the fantastic does not allow to be imprisoned or reduced to a set of characteristics, and is therefore a concept in flight. For ^{Todorov (2008}), the fantastic inhabits the threshold between the real/natural and the supernatural worlds, without being confused with the neighboring dimensions of the strange and the marvelous. While the strange, despite the eccentricity provoked in the characters of the narrative and in the reader, is grounded in the laws that govern reality as we know it in the extra-literary world, the marvelous shifts the explanation of the event to the supernatural dimension, combining it with the actions of creatures originating from the human imagination. The fantastic has doubt as its main ally, as it is characterized by not being captured by earthly explanations or by the intervention of beings from another world:

The fantastic occupies the time of this uncertainty. As soon as one of the two answers is chosen, one leaves the realm of the fantastic to enter a neighboring genre: the strange or the marvelous. The fantastic is the vacillation experienced by a being who knows nothing more than the natural laws, faced with an apparently supernatural event (^{TODOROV, 2008}, p. 15-16).

In this sense, the solution to the event remains in suspense, without entering the domains of the strange and the marvelous, that is, it inhabits the border. Considering the perspective of the authors involved in the discussion, the fantastic is understood as the proper space of the insoluble, since there are doubts about the reasons that drive the narrative, without categorically ensuring whether they belong to the domain of the real or the marvelous. In view of this theoretical contribution, in the following section, some notes are systematized on the inscription of the fantastic in Márcio Benjamin, an author from Rio Grande do Norte whose work is the corpus of this paper.

THE UNUSUAL DICTION OF MÁRCIO BENJAMIN

The symbol “sertão” (hinterland) is influenced by different founding dimensions of Brazilian reality. In addition to the economic, political, historical and environmental aspects that make up this space far from the coast, there is a mythical dimension, resulting from the spiritual, religious and imaginative convergence that permeates the symbolic material of this region (^{ALBUQUERQUE JR., 2009}). For Márcio Benjamin, a lawyer and writer from Rio Grande do Norte, the repertoire that emerges from the backlands fables are a source for his narrative production. Currently, Márcio’s work includes four books, three volumes of short stories and one novel: Fome (^2017a), Maldito sertão (2017b), Agouro (2019) and Sina (2022), respectively. In common, the narratives explore themes linked to the haunting stories of popular culture. In this work, the object of study used in the construction of a teaching practice was one of the short stories from the author's first book, Maldito Sertão, initially released in 2015 and which, at the time of writing this work, has 2 editions and 5 reprints.

The work presents twelve short stories in which the fantastic component takes center stage in the narrative, emerging in the Northeastern backlands and placing tension in the lives of characters from small towns in the interior. A compendium of creatures that inhabit the popular imagination is inscribed in the stories of Maldito Sertão. Werewolves, ghosts and the undead appear in the pages of the book interacting with people (explicitly alive). In this study, the short story “Casa de fazenda” is analyzed and used as a teaching-learning object.

Initially, observing the paratextual elements that make up the short story, one notices an opening that is made effective by space. In the same way that the title circumscribes the narrated actions to the rural environment, the epigraph that opens the narrative delimits the geographic coordinates of the backlands as the environment where the narrated events unfold. Let’s look at the verses used by the author as a window to enter the text:

When the brightness of this moon

Lights up the entire hinterland

The truth appears naked

In the form of a ghost

(LOURES apud ^{BENJAMIN, 2017b}, p. 14).

In addition to being a geographic marker, the four larger roundels in the epigraph help to suspend the reader's beliefs, even before the narrative begins, establishing a game between truth and appearance, which will be used throughout the text. This movement is essential for fantastic short story, since, as ^{Todorov (2008}) states, they live in the space of doubt, without inserting into any categorical determination imposed by the strange natural or the wonderful supernatural.

In this sense, several elements converge in the structuring of the rural space where the short story told in “Farmhouse” takes place. The beginning of the story also contributes greatly to the construction of the text’s setting. At the beginning of the first paragraph, for example, a sequence of descriptions begins that present as a common element the fact that it is creaking. Objects in the house, body parts and feelings harmonize in a concert of discomforts that surround the unnamed figure of a lonely old man, the last human remnant in the house.

Recovering the legend of the werewolf, according to which the seventh child of a couple would be marked by the curse, if the older children were all girls, “Casa de fazenda” explores aspects of this popular narrative not from the perspective of the creature that transforms itself on a full moon night, but from the perspective of its father, who observes, with dismay, the systematic death of the other members of the family at the hands of the wolf:

Six girls. All dead. The only son took the road. Crazy.

His wife had been the last; a lady like him, shattered when she tried to protect the one who was left in her arms.

She tried alone. Because he arrived it was too late.

He still unloaded the entire ammunition, but the animal only took a look out of the corner of its eye and disappeared into the forest, with the pieces of the innocent girl swinging inside its mouth (^{BENJAMIN, 2017b}, p. 15).

The death of the women stirred in the surviving character the desire to take revenge on the creature guilty of the murders. Despite his advanced age, the character’s vigor returns due to his desire to finally seal his revenge. When the chance to confront the enemy materializes, the character feels the recovery of the strength of youth that had been lost as the house and life were becoming empty: “The young man again, the old man firmly reloaded the gun. And fired again. And again” (^{BENJAMIN, 2017b}, p. 19).

Narrated in the third person, the short story recovers, through writing, aspects that point to the oral origins of short story narratives. This return movement is not only carried out from a thematic point of view, but is also part of the compositional structure of the text. This is achieved through, among other procedures, the use of linguistic elements specific to certain variants of Portuguese in its oral form (“apois” and “tudinha”, for example) and the insertion of the co-speaker-listener of the narration: “Have you ever found yourself alone, in a farmhouse, with the remains of your family scattered across the sandy floor?” (^{BENJAMIN, 2017b}, p. 15).

Like the indexes of orality, the tension between truth and appearance, which, as we have seen, is one of the central components in the construction of the text, is not limited to the themes worked on, but is formalized in the short story. One of these elements explores the expressive potential of the phonological level of the language at the end of the narrative. After the confrontation with the creature, which ends up dead, the old man discovers his son's face under the monster's face: “The old man fell to his knees, finally, when he recognized in the creature's snout the face of his only son” (^{BENJAMIN, 2017b}, p. 19).

This discovery is also made concrete by the sound similarity between the words “crazy” and “wolf”. If, looking at the written record, we already observe a certain similarity between them, considering the emission in productions such as [ˈloku] and [ˈlobu], the shared features become even more intense. Just as the fantastic seeks to couple in reality the data of a world below and beyond the laws of nature, the phonetic similarity between the words makes the monster, the wolf, inhabit the man, the crazy, recognizing bestiality as a face of the human, even if it is often hidden.

THE FANTASTIC LESSONS OF LEARNING BY TEACHING, TEACHING TO LEARN

The internship space-time seeks to enable the intern to understand the educational context based on the social reality of the school where the internship takes place, with the aim of a) developing skills related to teaching-learning concepts and practices appropriate to the complex, plural and diverse reality of the school, b) relating their area of ​​knowledge and training to their professional practice and school practices, and c) positioning themselves critically to ensure that everyone is capable of, and has the right to, learn. As Selma Pimenta and Maria Socorro Lima rightly point out,

It is important to develop in students, future teachers, skills for knowledge and analysis of schools, the institutional space where teaching and learning takes place, as well as the communities in which they are inserted. It also involves knowledge, use and evaluation of techniques, methods and strategies for teaching in different situations. It involves the ability to read and recognize theories present in the pedagogical practices of school institutions. In other words, the internship carried out in this way allows for the contribution of research and the development of research skills. (PIMENTA; LIMA, 2005/²⁰⁰⁶, p. 20-21).

From this perspective and the understanding of the fantastic short story and local production, a didactic sequence of Portuguese Language was developed, aimed at the seventh year of Middle School. Considering the indicative guidelines of the National Common Curricular Base (2018), the sequence considers, in the proposed activities, the artistic-literary field of action, relating actions linked to the language practices of reading/listening, text production and orality. At least three skills are mobilized, (EF67LP14)², (EF67LP28)³ e (EF69LP53)⁴.

The educational objective of the proposal is to promote the practice of literary literacy in schools, with the aim of highlighting, for students, the significant potential of literary texts, using as a strategy the analysis of the literary genre of the fantastic short story, with its thematic and structural particularities, focusing on the literary production of Rio Grande do Norte, specifically, the short story work of Márcio Benjamin. The specific objectives, which underpin the stages of the sequence, are:

The didactic sequence was organized into four moments (Chart 1), to be carried out in four classroom meetings, each corresponding to two 50-minute classes. Considering the specificities of the didactic sequence genre, didactic-pedagogical practices are linked in an organic and cohesive way, with the aim of achieving the previously established teaching-learning objectives.

Source: the authors (2022)

Chart 1 - Stages of the didactic sequence on the fantastic short story 

As already mentioned, working with the genre of fantastic stories is one of the contents included in the seventh-grade teaching plan, and is also in many textbook collections adopted by educational institutions. This content is covered in an exemplary manner in the second volume of the collection Se liga na língua: leitura, produção de texto e língua, by Wilson ^{Ormundo and Cristiane Siniscalchi (2018}). In this material, the literary genre in focus is explored in the third chapter, which presents short stories by Moacyr Scliar and Lourdinha Leite Barbosa as teaching objects. The specificity of the type of short story studied is justified, since, in the sixth grade, students are expected to have already been introduced to the general characteristics of the short story genre and to the elements of narrative.

Although the textbook contains elements that correspond to the proposed study of the genre, as interns, it is considered that the development of authorial teaching materials allows them to experience different movements that make up the teaching work. Likewise, from the students' perspective, it would be the moment to have access to other teaching objects, in addition to the textbook. Therefore, for the study of the fantastic short story, a teaching material was created (Figure 1) that can be used in the classroom by students and teachers, encompassing theoretical aspects and guiding questions for the analysis of a literary text. However, this does not mean the marginalization of the textbook, since, in many contexts, this material played a central role in the dynamics in the classroom. In this sense, the book was used in dialogue with the directed study produced, in addition to be a parameter for the adaptation of the content and language to the students' age group.

Source: the authors (2022)

Figure 1 Directed study on the short story “Casa de fazenda”, by Márcio Benjamin 

The preparation of the support material can be guided by the collection available in the local library and by the sociocultural context in which the school is located. For this proposal, the book of short stories by the writer from Rio Grande do Norte, Márcio ^{Benjamin, Maldito Sertão (2017b}), was chosen as the corpus, specifically the short story “Casa de fazenda”, to be worked on with the students.

As previously mentioned, the use of literary texts from Rio Grande do Norte in basic education is present in the legal guidelines for the provision of literature teaching in Rio Grande do Norte. In its first article, Law 11,231, of August 4, 2022, establishes the institution “in the state public and private education network the content of Potiguar Literature as complementary themes in an interdisciplinary way” (^{RIO GRANDE DO NORTE, 2022}, p. 1). In addition to legal prerogatives, we consider, including from the experience acquired from school life, that the use of texts written by local authors allows the development of a practice of literary literacy in its effective and affective dimension. Regarding the first aspect, we understand that the effectiveness of the literary literacy process is related to the objective of enabling the appropriation of the text read by students with a view to their agency in the process of constructing meanings (^{COSSON, 2007}). The affective aspect of reading derives from the encounter between readers and works, since, as Vincent ^{Jouve (2012}) argues, emotion is an unavoidable component of the contact that emerges from the text. In his approach, the author differentiates between a manifest emotion, considered a constitutive part of the work, and an emotion felt by the reader at the time of reading and which, in the classroom, can function as an entry for the text's paths.

Considering these vectors, we propose an interventionist activity in the classroom based on work with local literature, in our case, literature from Rio Grande do Norte. When reflecting on the relevance of using a “local library” in literature classes, ^{Souza and Barreiros (2015}) found that “cultural aspects of their surroundings are represented in literary texts, the subjects identify with the literature to the point of feeling culturally represented, establishing empathy and interest in the literary text” (^{SOUZA; BARREIROS, 2015}, p. 71). The researchers also highlight another point related to the role of the school as an instance that values ​​and legislates on local production, since the latter becomes an object of study, entering different spaces of circulation (^{SOUZA; BARREIROS, 2015}). These considerations dialogue with the perspective that supported the elaboration of the didactic sequence developed.

Once the short story was chosen, we began a process of contact with this text so that, based on our reading experience and the mobilization of the theoretical framework built during our formative years, it would be possible to extract the guiding questions for the directed study. Actions like this are extremely important for working with literature in basic education, since, from this perspective, the text acquires a central role in teaching-learning practices, as indicated by the guiding documents for teaching, such as the PCN (¹⁹⁹⁷) and the BNCC (2018), since the mastery of diverse theories and technical terminology loses its meaning when the friction between subject and text is lost.

Therefore, it is necessary for the teacher to also assume the role of a reader, enabling the semiotic machinery of the text to be put into operation. However, this need is not justified only as a teaching attitude of building a cultural repertoire that can be mobilized in the classroom, since it involves identifying a social and humanizing function of the literary text, as Antonio Candido recognizes:

I understand humanization here (since I have spoken so much about it) as the process that confirms in man those traits that we consider essential, such as the exercise of reflection, the acquisition of knowledge, good disposition towards others, the fine-tuning of emotions, the ability to delve into life's problems, the sense of beauty, the perception of the complexity of the world and its beings, the cultivation of humor. Literature develops in us a share of humanity to the extent that it makes us more understanding and open to nature, society, and our fellow man. (^{CANDIDO, 2017}, p. 182).

Thinking about the reading process requires, among other material constraints, the availability of time to have contact with the work, initially allowing to be carried away by the cadence of the word and, subsequently, regulating one's gaze to thematic, linguistic and compositional aspects, related in an integrated way in the text's architecture. However, when considering the course load and the profusion of other teaching objects that need to be contemplated throughout the school year, the time available for reading in the classroom becomes limited.

Initially, the plan included only three classroom meetings, each lasting two hours. However, as the activities were being developed, a meeting was added to facilitate an activity aimed at formalizing the work with the literary text in the classroom. Considering that the seventh-grade class has four Portuguese language classes per week, the sequence was planned to be developed in its entirety in two weeks.

Source: the authors (2023)

Figure 2 Flowchart of the constituent steps of the didactic sequence 

In the initial movement of the didactic sequence, aspects related to the narrative and the constituent elements of these texts were discussed, considering the specificity of the genre, since it is a singular type, the “fantastic short story” (^{PAES, 1985}; ^{ROAS, 2014}; ^{TODOROV, 2008}), the general characteristics of the “short story” genre (^{CORTÁZAR, 2006}; ^{GOTLIB, 1987}; ^{POE, 2017}) and the constituent elements of the narrative text plot, narrator, time, space and characters (^{FRANCO JR., 2019}; ^{GANCHO, 1991}). Although this content is part of the teaching plan of the previous series, we consider this introductory movement necessary to pave the way before entering, specifically, into the discussions about the fantastic short story. Therefore, in a synthetic way, the five elements of the narrative and the characteristics of the short story genre are revisited, trying to demonstrate that the act of telling stories is part of our daily lives, whether in the form of films, series, soap operas, novels and even as gossip.

During the first meeting, it is suggested that the short story “Casa de Fazenda” be read in class. This activity can be done in two different moments. Initially, in pairs, the students would read the short story silently, or they could also do it individually, depending on the number of copies available at the school. Ideally, one copy per student should be used, so that they can have personal, individual contact with the book and the reading. The silent reading is then followed by the teacher reading it aloud, with the aim of evoking orality and its characteristics as a traditional component of storytelling for collective appreciation. One teaching recommendation is for the teacher to ask the students if they can perceive any difference between the two ways of receiving the text.

Oralization allows us to work on theoretical aspects of the genre, such as the acoustic origin of the short story (^{GOTLIB, 1987}) in various cultures dispersed in time and around the world. At the end of the first meeting, the notion of the fantastic should also be presented. The understanding of this concept was constructed based on the study of reference materials, such as texts by David ^{Roas (2014}), Ítalo ^{Calvino (2004}), José Paulo ^{Paes (1985}) and Tzvetan ^{Todorov (2008}). In order to teach a concept as complex as the fantastic as an aesthetic category, we sought to use images capable of giving concreteness to this abstraction. In the end, two figures served the intended purpose: the figure of the tug of war, an image that we also used in the elaboration of this article, and the geometric scheme of the intersection between sets (Figure 3), locating the fantastic in the interpenetration between worlds.

Source: the authors (2022)

Figura 3 - Representation of the fantastic as an intersection between the real world and the supernatural world 

In the second meeting, activities are expected to focus on the guided study prepared for the class. This material is designed in two parts: one based on the presentation of theoretical aspects related to the genre studied and another organized in the format of an activity, whose objective was to systematize the reading of the short story, supported by the constituent procedures of literary analysis (^{GANCHO, 1991}; ^{FRANCO JR., 2019}). Some topics of discussion make up the expository section of the guided study, such as the presence of narratives in everyday life, the origin of the short story, the main characteristics of the short story, the fantastic short story, the concept of verisimilitude and the elements of the narrative. Despite the number of elements and concepts, the presentation should be synthetic, since the focus of the activity is the verticalized reading of the literary text.

The second section of the guided study actually contains seven questions, aiming to contemplate different aspects of the construction of the short story. The number of questions is not arbitrary, since the text studied dialogues with the legend of the werewolf, according to which, after the birth of six daughters, if the seventh child is a boy, he would be marked by lycanthropy. In this order, the questions explore the following aspects: (i) intertextuality with popular culture, (ii) the function of the epigraph, (iii) the elements that make up the setting of the short story, (iv) the marks of time in the narrative, (v) the construction of the protagonist, (vi) the tension between the real world and the supernatural world and, finally, (vii) the elaboration of questions for the author of the short story, Márcio Benjamin.

The questions for the guided study are divided into two parts. The first part is related to the analysis of the short story, that is, questions 1 to 6. In the same meeting, we propose that the exercise be corrected orally with the participation of the students. The second part of the study is intended for the third meeting of the didactic sequence, when we also propose that a moment be set aside for the students to produce the questions to be asked to the author. The recommendation that this production take place in class considers the possibility of monitoring the elaboration of the questions. Next, all the questions should be arranged on the board and, from this set, the class will organize blocks of questions. An example of possible questions is presented in Chart 2, distributed across three thematic axes: the life and writing of Márcio Benjamin; the book Maldito Sertão; and the short story “Casa de fazenda”.

Source: the authors (2022)

Chart 2 Groups of questions, prepared by students for an interview with the writer, organized into thematic axes. 

In the third meeting, students are asked to illustrate some excerpts from the short story they read. Bringing in other forms of expression and exploring other semiotic systems are examples of interesting strategies in a discussion about language, which provide, among other issues, engagement and participation of students, including the quietest and shyest ones, as was possible to verify in practice. Furthermore, this exercise model enables to visualize the image reconstruction of the text, establishing a dialogue between semiotic systems (the word and the image), an aspect valued within the official documents guiding teaching in Brazil, such as the BNCC (2018) which incorporated the nomenclature “linguistic-semiotic analysis” with the aim of encompassing the study of multi-semiotic texts as an object of teaching and learning (^{COSTA-HÜBES; PEREIRA, 2022}). Furthermore, we understand that, just as paths and methodologies related to the individuality of teachers are woven step by step during training, it is necessary to understand that students also carry their own characteristic traits and that these must, to a certain extent, be taken into account in the activities developed and in the forms of assessment carried out by the teacher, such as the use of different forms of expression in the classroom.

In the fourth meeting of the sequence, we propose an interview with the writer Márcio Benjamin - an activity subject to the author’s availability to participate. Initially, the conversation should follow the order of the guiding themes of each group. It is understood that the course of the interview may change depending on the topics that arise during the meeting and the answers given by the interviewee. After the activity is completed, we consider it appropriate to set aside a moment dedicated to the joint evaluation of the activities developed around the didactic sequence, based on the dialogue between the teacher and the students.

Based on the joint assessment, it will be possible to determine whether or not the author's presence at school intensified student engagement, considering that, as is well known, many students do not know writers personally - at most, the image they have of authors comes from the blurbs of works or the pages of textbooks. It is also proposed to investigate whether, after the meeting, students began to look more frequently at the library collection, especially those specifically featuring local authors, or even whether there was a greater interest in works by the same author, if these are available in the school collection.

From the perspective of teachers in training, it is expected that the didactic proposal outlined can contribute to the implementation of literary literacy in basic education, and can be applied, replicated and adapted to school contexts with scarce material resources. In this way, the aim is to promote a literature class that captivates students and involves them, from the first to the last class, in the analysis of the literary text and in other activities proposed based on this material and in the reader-work-author relationship, bringing literary work closer to everyday school life.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

In this article, a teaching-learning practice of Portuguese was systematized in the 7th grade of Middle School, during the supervised internship period for teacher training (Portuguese), whose object of knowledge was the literary genre fantastic short story. From the conception to the evaluation, it is important to highlight the formative function of the internships in the construction of teaching knowledge, since it allowed experiencing the construction of teaching materials that can, in the future, be used in the classroom based on an activity validated as extremely fruitful.

It is clear that the final stages of the undergraduate course, represented by mandatory internships, are extremely significant for undergraduates, since they provide some of these students with their first effective contact with the classroom in rehearsals for their future profession. They allow for dynamic experiences of school, especially in classroom teaching activities. Thus, the activities developed during the internship led to the experience of the various movements that make up the classroom scene, deconstructing the view of the class as a ready-made object and establishing the procedural image that guides teaching practice - initial planning, class execution, critical reflection on initial teaching performance and successive (re)planning. Furthermore, these movements gave rise to issues that, at first, may occupy the margins of the undergraduate student's concerns, such as the placement of one's voice in the classroom (and the care with this work instrument) and the interpersonal relationships that are built with students.

Regarding the didactic sequence developed, when exploring the fantastic short story, it is important to highlight the possibility of reading, analyzing and, later, transposing authors of contemporary literature who have focused on this production into the classroom. In addition, we can add the fertile nature of fantastic texts in the formation of readers, who eagerly consume enormous and long book series in which the fantastic component rises to the forefront of the composition. In this sense, it is understood that literature ceases to be seen as an unattainable material for students.

Regarding the choice of Márcio Benjamin's short story, it can be inferred from the narrative that the recovery of popular traditions formalized in the text does not eliminate possible significant updates of the story's motifs from the reading. In addition to these thematic components related to the literary genre, the emergence of the oral source of these narratives and the tension inherent to the fantastic in the base of the short story are elements that can be mobilized in the classroom, creating an atmosphere receptive to the text. In the school environment, these aspects can also be used as a strategy to highlight the inseparable relationships between form and content, thus recognizing different aspects of the text in the construction of meanings.

Furthermore, it is worth noting that, although the teaching sequence presented here focuses on a specific short story, the proposal can be modified, depending on the context, needs and possibilities (such as the available collection, the reading profile of the students and the teacher's repertoire). In this sense, such choices should consider local authors, who are available to visit schools, as in the proposal developed.

As suggestions for further research, we highlight, in advance, a study that focuses on the application of the sequence proposed here in the classroom, investigating its feasibility, the effects produced and, if possible, pointing out possible improvements. In addition, we point out the possibility of studies that bring didactic sequences whose literary texts are written by local authors of different profiles, such as people up to 30 years old; women; and black authors, to investigate possible variations in the student-work-author relationship, depending on the level of thematic, aesthetic and even interpersonal identification. Furthermore, we believe that studies that analyze the feasibility and results of didactic sequences that, in addition to promoting the formation of student readers, invest in the formation of potential authors, experimenting with different languages, such as the fantastic short stories, the poem, the cordel and the chronicle, would be relevant.