A teaching sequence for the university level, focusing on the press opinion article as a genre, based on genre assumptions (Bakhtin, 1992, Bronckart, 2003) and on teaching sequences (Dolz, Noverraz e Schneuwly, 2004), comprehends the following activities: pre-reading (previous knowledge activation; hypotheses raising); reading (production conditions; constitution of text meaning; reading strategies); post-reading (relationships between text and reality; critical awareness). These were followed by chain genres production (press opinion article and related genres), promoting interaction among text, reader and writer, complemented by metacognitive reflection. Applied to two groups of freshmen, the sequence showed statistically significant results in the development of reading competence.